Sir Myshkin

I never saw it trigger additional procs when testing it for them, but it took a bit of extra attention before anyone realized that Contaminate was causing additional proc effects (as in procs on the proc-effect) off Radiation Melee, which triggers a similar pseudo-pet call. Given that a few other abilities have seen some random and unmentioned updates in their impact with procs (whether intentional or bug/bug-fix) it might be worth double-checking at some point. But, to my knowledge it doesn't, that I recall, proc on the splash effect.

On its own it is a nice free aggro magnet, does a few interesting things and is just a general, easy to generate bonus pet. I wouldn't say it's necessarily doing something ground breaking, but it is possible to get several of them out at a time in a properly equipped ability. I found more use in it as part of the set when packing it together for the set bonuses. It's a useful proc if you have the spare slot and it can go in an ability that can support an extra without having a better option. For my personal Dark/Sonic, it's in the PBAoE stun and I often have two of the Fonts up at any given time. I think the Font is kind of a "YMMV" proc in how you feel its usefulness weighs out. It's not nearly as direct/obvious as a damage proc, or an immediate buff/bonus proc, that's for sure.

I ... already... answered this: No, they're not in the primary ST chain, but that doesn't make them useless, and regardless what are my alternative options? 13 AT-Specific attacks, 2 Buffs, 1 Support, and an Aura. It's a Blaster, you're going to take more than 4 or 5 attacks..., even if you don't use them, they become ... something, a set bonus, a rare situational ability, something? And it's not like I get a choice in taking Power Blast, I have to take it (or Bolt, either one, might as well take the better). I run into a mob, drop and AoE, BU or not, whatever minion I hit with Power Burst immediately after that, is dead. 540+ Damage between the two. If I did hit BU before the AoE, the Power Blast is just as functionally strong. I could walk into a spawn, drop the AoE, hit my largest threat (boss/lieut, whichever mattered more) with a couple of heavy ST attacks, cycle into minions with one-shot kill Blasts and Bursts

I knew I had seen this somewhere in the thread, can't believe I had to go back all the way to July 30th to dig it out though. I absolutely had to know where I stood comparatively in my attempt to vindicate Energy Blast (okay, it's partially Electricity Manipulation, but it's still a Blaster dagnabbit!) Energy Blast/Electricity Manipulation/Electric Mastery Purely on the merits of the Blaster, Lightning Aura with the -Res proc, Charged Brawl > Havoc Punch > Snipe > Shocking Grasp, alternating 10/s shifts of BU and Aim. Going in with Ageless > Power Surge, started the clock immediately on Hybrid No Melt Armor available (counter to what's used as per nihilii's list for the Fire/Atomic, important to note), and also didn't use Weaken Resolve (is in the build, but as-is, it doesn't offset enough against its own cast time and constant re-application, haven't tried it with an Achilles proc in it yet). T4 Musculature, Reactive Radials, T4 Hybrid Assault, Ageless Cores 2:14 and 2:15 w/ Hybrid On 3:00 w/ Hybrid Off <- This includes a crash on Power Surge, Ageless cast to restore, triggering Unleash Potential as my carry-over, and turning Lightning Aura back on.* Also, to avoid any double-posting unnecessarily, I've also done a boat load of Tank testing for Beta, which resulted in a counter-test for a Brute build: Super Strength/Bio Armor/Soul T4 Musculature, Degenerative, Ageless, Hybrid Assault Cores Built as a Proc Monster Did a bunch of timed runs, listed a lot of that data in the Beta threads on the Tank tests. Best time for Brute w/ Hybrid on: 1:55 (461) Hybrid on Range: 1:55-2:10 Hybrid off Range: 2:20-2:35 For those that might be curious, with the Beta Improvements to Tankers, for the same exact build reversed to a Tank: Hybrid on Range: 2:09-2:15 Hybrid off Range: 2:24-2:45 Build is Double Stack Rage, Haymaker > Gloom > KO-B > Haymaker > Gloom > Punch Super Strength is Scary.

You fine folk might find amusement in this as I did. Started the topic over in the Blaster sub section, but did a Defender variant of what I titled "The Mad King Special." An attempt at maximizing Energy Blast to its fullest extent (KB Love and all) in a high-performance extreme-recharge (250-300%) build. Since not everyone frequents all sub-sections, figured it worth sharing here too. Obviously the Defender version had to be Storm, so this it: Do everything you can to keep the +100% FF+Rech up and running. Attack chain of Snipe > Dominate > Power Burst (so quick, so painful!). To Start: Drop Freezing Rain > Tornado > LS (Get Decimate Bonus), run Snipe > Dominate > Power Burst > Snipe > Aim > Dominate > Snipe > Power Burst > Freezing Rain > Dominate > Snipe > Power Burst > Tornado > LS (Yup, Get Bonus, we're already back here and it's only been 23/s!). Yeah, this thing eats endurance like a Dyson in a dust bowl. Bring Blues. Edit: Forgot to mention for those running the most current Mid's, the placement of the Force of Will pool is shifted from older Mid's files (as I'm still one patch backward), so it's Weaken Resolve > Mighty Leap > Unleash Potential for that Pool set. UP ends up giving the build a 60/s up, 60/s down 47% Def to All ontop of 75% S/L Resists (and trailing values for the others).

What was said by Blazing about Seismic is pretty on the button, that one attack hits like a monster truck when loaded out with procs and is probably worth giving up your slotting in Hurricane for. Personally I'd say trade Gravity Distortion Field for Dimension Shift (you'll get to use it a ton more often for similar effective use), and swap Will of the Controller to it, with an extra damage proc (it'll kick twice, once at cast, and once more 10/s in), then you can manage Wormhole with 5 slots. That'd also give you the chance to drop another FF+Rech in Wormhole, every time that power goes off it'll have decent odds of proc'ing and helping drop that recharge even further. If you really want to keep Gravity Distortion for practical use, then I'd dump O2 Boost and just keep it around with an Acc/Rech in it for offset usage. But honestly, you could favor the use of a bit more global accuracy/ToHit, so I might even say fill that one-off power choice with Tactics. Personally I'm super curious if the Immobilize that Dimension Shift creates prevents KB effects or not. If it does (which I'd think it should, given the power), then you could Shift a group and drop a Tornado in the Shift with them, and it'd just eat them alive! It'd be a killer way to, er, "arrest" them 😉 You can also wormhole gorups into Dimension Shift, and Dimension Shift after Wormhole-ing two groups together, and get twice the proc-usage on a double-spawn since the Shift doesn't have an determined mob cap. I put the changes into your build so you could see the differences:

You're going in the right direction for sure. I tweaked a couple things to get you more balance in your defense, and more resistance. If I recall correctly your optimal ST chain is Hack > Disembowel > Hack > Headsplitter (with Char replacing Hack when it's up), which you have the recharge to run. Some things I moved or added: You'll want to get an Achilles Heel in there to help soften up your enemies, so I added that to Hack since it'll be the most commonly used fast attack. Another slot to tactics so you can benefit from the 6-set bonus (+2.5% Melee/Ranged/AoE defense) Actually slotted Deflection Moved Armageddon to Shield Charge and used the sixth slot for FF+Rech proc. Every time you use that on a decent sized spawn, the proc should go off and give you a burst of +100% recharge, which instantly impacts Shield Charge and brings it down to a 21-22/s recharge from 27 when it goes off, meaning more Charges! Woo! Moved the Might AT-O to Headsplitter to better balance end consumpetion, recharge, and damage in that attack, and used the void in Hack to load it up with Procs and amp up its damage potential. Flipped one proc in Disembowel to a Hecatomb Damage IO because it was worth more in the power than the proc. Balanced IO choices in Whirling Sword. Shifted Maneuvers to Reactive Defense set for the resistance bonuses. Shifted placement of Unique +Def IO's to Deflection, which in turn shifted LotG from Maneuvers to Phalanx in order to allow previous line change. Added fifth slot to Battle Agility to get another 3.75% S/L resistance. With Vigor and Tactics and the additional light Accuracy enhancement in your attacks, you hit 95-96% to +4 in everything (except Char, but it's close enough), so no major need for Kismet IO in there. If at any point you decide you want to switch/try a damage Alpha over Vigor, I'd suggest tossing the Kistmet into Hover in place of the HO since you're at the soft cap already without Hover, and then you'll still stay around the same percentile to +3 (what you'd face as a level-shifted Incarnate anyway).

Generally didn't take anything I didn't see a purpose/use for at some point, and I assume you're referring to the placement of FF+Rech. Of course I want that proc in all the AoE/Cone attacks to ensure that it gets chances to trigger even when focusing on larger groups, and as for things like Power Blast and Power Burst, those are both solid attacks, help build +Dam off the inherent, and are great soft-control damage for managing individual targets on the fly, and again, I want to keep that +100% going as much as possible to keep the recharge on Power Surge, Unleash Potential, Aim, and Build Up capped out. The main ST attack chain carries the full assortment of procs (Charged, Havoc, Snipe, and Grasp) with two of those carrying the FF+Rech to keep the duration consistent. This challenge was specifically about Energy Blast and trying to overcome the impression of mediocrity that commonly gets thrown at it. Taking what the majority of people often dislike about it, and turn it into a considerable strength, versus a weakness. The tactic I took to get there could definitely be used towards a few other sets, for sure. I will admit that the Blaster-specific version of this is really more an Electricity Manipulation bend than Energy Blast given I'm using the much higher DPA melee attacks (and proc'd out Grasp) to do it. I did test chains focused on the Energy Blast attacks alone, but it doesn't have the speed necessary, it really suffers from not having at least one reasonably high DPA attack (ala Blaze in Fire Blast). Most of its attacks are half, at best, of even just attacks like Charged Brawl. I know the minimum idea of keeping those procs active works so long as there's enough attacks with the proc balanced around chain/usage, so translating it to Sentinels and Defenders is relatively easy. The interesting side effect is that the Defender probably has the most potential with Storm as a primary since Tornado can act as a mass crowd control, does damage, kicks Achilles around, and isolates thing in one spot with KD while Lightning Storm blasts away at things. All that before the player even gets engaged in things.

Practical Testing Update Had a chance to take the Blaster build over to Pineapple and take a swing at a few things. I can't say I didn't feel like it would be going in, but this really feels like a "Give me a pocket defender and I'm good" kind of build. Against even con enemies, build does fine, once I start cranking the difficulty though, I really have to pay a lot more attention to where the mez-capable enemies are and really focus my initial attention on knocking them out of the fight before dealing with the leftover scum. I really tried to stay away from inspiration use too just to get a feel for it, but the level of HP Blasters get (even amped on Beta) still is a bit inferior when dealing with a larger spawn, and it was a bit hairy on the survival front when I started tackling +4. I ended up removing Thunder Strike, the animation just kept me locked in one spot for too long and wasn't a great trade off. The splash also does feel pretty "eh" even with procs involved, so I flipped back over to Explosive Blast for both the range, and the faster animation. From a ST perspective, I did test that out too. Using a Pylon for its standard practical testing function, 2:14 with Hybrid Assault on, 3:00 with it off. That's using the force of Energy Blast backed by alternating BU/Aim and just the -Res Fury proc in Lightning Aura which only had a chance once every 10/s, and typically is up maybe 20-30/s every minute on average. Weaken Resolve was in there, but the cast time on that power with its relatively short duration ends up kind of canceling out the benefit it gave cause of how often I have to recast it. It can take the Achilles Heel -Res proc, which I didn't try and I'll have to see if that changes things enough.

That may actually be a conflict of Mid's update cross over. Those powers should actually be Mighty Leap and Unleash Potential... I'm assuming that you're seeing the other two because of swapped placement. Which, End/Jump in Mighty Leap, and then LotG 7.5, Def/Rech +5'd (two of these from any set will work), a 50 Rech IO +5'd, and Kismet +6% all in Unleash Potential. You might've noticed a trend in general, I wasn't chasing set bonuses, just recharge. I tried to max out my proc options in as many of the attacks as I could, and trended towards using excess attacks as fodder for recharge bonuses. If it didn't get a bonus, it got procs. Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, and Shocking Grasp are all 4 piece damage procs, and I realized later on after posting the build that the Snipe would actually need the FF+Rech so I'd have two attacks in a ~5/s cycle rolling for the proc. The only reason the snipe isn't filled to the gills with procs is because it tests out better running the apocalypse set (with its proc) and an extra damage proc, than a 4-proc set on average because I get to shrink its recharge down pretty dramatically and I really want that thing firing at full force as often as possible too. The reason most would push for soft capping a build is to get some kind of natural survivability. This kind of build is bending all its dice rolls on Surge of Power. In that 80/s window of downtime I can pop a T2 Purple and Unleash Potential and be at ~44-45% defense across the board. It is most definitely not what a normal player would attempt to roll, but that's kind of the whole theme, what people wouldn't play because it sounds crazy. It's not really meant to be a casual thing, but a "lets bend this till it breaks and see what happens" kind of thing. I think the Sentinel versions probably have better balance of that idea since I can actually hit resistance cap a bit better on those, and their window on the T9's is only 20/s instead of 80/s.

Sure thing. This article on the Paragon Wiki talks about To Hit and Accuracy, but the important thing is down at the bottom where there's a table that says "Players attacking Critters" with two columns. It shows you what your base modifier is against a certain level range. If you take that value you can plug it in to the settings on Mids, and then those values you see will be representative. What you want to hit is 95% against whatever level you plan to combat against. For most the goal is 95% against +4, but incarnate level shifts skew that, so at the minimum you want 95% against +3's. Other things you can add into a build to help your accuracy are things like the Kismet +6% IO, or Tactics, the Nerve Alpha, just to name a few things.

The simple beauty of this whole thing is that it's not really reliant on the secondary to pull off its trick, it can do that just fine with the powers within the primary. Now, not all the secondaries are well primed for this, and part of my goal was, yes, looking for areas with the most amount of single-hit damage more than anything, but you could easily plug-and-play whatever you want in the middle of that Primary+Power Surge combo. Explosive Blast pales pretty significantly in comparison to Thunder Strike in this scenario, though. And Energy Torrent does more for similar effect. Honestly there's just no reason to add MORE AoE into the build when it already can cycle two attacks in succession, and has a third even larger one on a slightly longer cooldown. Granted one of them is a ranged cone and the other melee, but Thunder Strike should effectively wipe out all minions on its own. Not taking Explosive Blast was an exclusion of choice based on an abundance of much better options. In the Sentinel variations you'll actually see that power pop back into the line up. Since Tactical is one of the sets I'd looked at anyway, I put together a Tactical Arrow variant:

Myshkin’s “Mad King Special” You all are going to think I’m crazy, but it’s honestly not my fault why we ended up here together. Me writing this, you reading it, my laughing maniacally in the background. @Vanden made a comment in the Beta threads about the disparity between IO performance on Energy Blast versus Fire Blast. I thought, well, yeah, there’s kind of a wide margin between them from a damage scale because of Blaze, but that one power kinda pushes Fire Blast to the top of the heap in general. There are only about 3-4 attacks that Blasters have access to which perform at a DPA 100+ excluding Snipes, and only one of them is in the Primary (Blaze). When I thought about this, it made me wonder something with procs, and the Blaster concept in general… I wrote Energy Blast off when I went through the Proc Monster project starting with Defenders. Almost all of the powers either stand as dysfunctional to most people for the KB or have to be fixed with the KB->KD IO, which makes them a struggle point. They still do have a decent assortment of damage procs to work with, however, and they also have a unique proc that I’ve been able to confirm since then as an easily stackable effect: Force Feedback’s +Rech. Specifically that you wont stack the +100%, but you will stack the duration triggers (it piggy backs on top of the existing, extending the duration by 5/s each stack). Within minutes I pulled Mid’s open and dropped into the graphs for DPA on all the secondaries looking for a “power move” I could proc into obscurity and make a mockery of Fire Blast, and I found one. One gloriously proc-broken power, and one beautiful 100+ DPA attack in the same secondary. From there I pulled my key powers and stuck FF+Rech everywhere. EVERYWHERE! I want that power to go off like Christmas Lights on dubstep! I want to live under the banner of +100% and stay there so long as an enemy sits in front of me. But what could I possibly do with an extra +100%? Well, if I can build 200% base to start with, an extra 100% means I can cap the reduction on some key abilities like Surge of Power. Man, that means I’ll need to visit this for Sentinels now too, right? Totally right, and I built those as well. My goal now became “Perma T9’s” (well, as close as is possible before hitting the ceiling). What else could I play around with that has obnoxious cooldowns? Unrelenting Will and Unleash Potential! Golden! Have you ever seen Nova on a sub 30/s cooldown solo? Thunderstrike doing 500 damage on a 4/s cooldown? How about Build Up and Aim chained back to back, to back, to back… to back… ? It’s Madness! Pure Madness! It’s a madness that I couldn’t avoid, and it has the potential to live under 300%+ Global Recharge, and over 100% +Damage. If the math is to be believed, we’re talking about ~400+ DPS. I’m not sure, I haven’t tested it yet. Surge of Power is 120 up, 80 down, means I gotta do a heckuva lot in 120 seconds to make it count. My hope was to test this before posting, but Pineapple is down, and I want to share the insanity early, so here we are. Given this is a special pile of insanity, I’ve coined this concept build as the Mad King Special. A little ode to Game of Thrones for those playing the home game. Energy Blast/Electricity Manipulation/Electricity Mastery Blaster I knew there was still an opportunity to improve survival on this concept, and that Sentinels would give me a clear cut path into it, so I also built a few Sentinel copies as well that function under similar pretense, but actually allowed me to fit Unrelenting in with Unleashed Will to extend the fun times. I'm looking into a Defender build that might get the most advantage from something of this nature. Currently thinking Storm would be the most amusing, we'll see. So all these going forward are Sentinel Builds: Energy Blast/Electric Armor/Psionic: Energy Blast/Energy Aura/Psionic - I really like the potential way this one looks like it'd play out. Energy Blast/Ice Armor/Psionic - Probably the most Up and Down of the options (30 up, 30 down of the T9) Energy Blast/Invulnerability/Psionic - This one I feel is the most tuned in to survival with being able to pop Unleash Potential (if the numbers are accurate, haven't double checked the final released version compared to my slightly outdated Mid's) during the 20/s downtime of Unstoppable, putting it into near-softcap defense for 60/s. Energy Blast/Super Reflexes/Psionic Editing in Defender Edition, Storm Summoning/Energy Blast/Psychic Mastery - This one might actually trump from a damage and survival aspect. Didn't go the route of a T9 because I really wanted to patch in a harder hitting attack and needed to dive into Char or Dominate for that. Thankfully I can mimic a lot of that same survival still. I know, I'm a bit crazy for even thinking of playing any of these. Update: Mad King in Action I've gone through and done a practical build of one of the concepts, specifically Storm/Energy Defender. Of all the Blast based options, Storm felt the most right to really nail the chaos of this approach and really get the most amount of theoretical application in effect. I decided I was going to focus on as cheap a process as possible to make the build work before really tapping into the "final" build to see what the leveling experience was like when focused on just relying on the FF+Rech procs. My take away there is just pure joy in how much it effectively does impact. Not nearly as much as the final variant, but being able to level up with just a few Acc and the FF+Rech stacked in nearly every single power really changed the idea of "Do I need Hasten?" Eventually, of course, I did end up picking it up, but my "v3" update of the build pushed it all the way to 47 as it's final necessity is just the "late game" performance. FF+Rech Proc really was that Hasten fixer without a power pick. I also learned that the added impact of what having a Storm build with that much on-tap performance is impossible to feed from an Endurance stand point, but might have nailed down the exact specialist build that makes it work (so far). Unleash Potential on ~140/s cooldown, Victory Rush, and Conserve Power 138/s cooldown gives 4:30 of endurance course-correction, which leaves me the ability to take Clarion for Mez hopefully, and fix that glaring hole in the build. As it stands currently I can go into a +3 Spawn, drop Freezing Rain, Tornado, Lightning Storm, Explosive Blast and Nova (in that exact order), and the spawn will be reduced down to just the Boss mobs, which LS and Tornado quickly chew up. And I can do this process every 20/s, with Nova every-other cycle. Joined a team on the first respec into v3.0, first spawn where everyone was waiting, no one saw it coming, and the response shortly after was: "...Wow." I also invested a bit more focus on Gale than would typically be seen, and now between that, FR, Tornado, and Explosive Blast, I am effectively a "KD Controller" with all of my abilities. So long as I can get the Mez-Casters into the KD loop, I have a fairly solid system of butt-planting control. Decimation +BU inside Lightning Storm is also just cosmic hilarity as it too pops, so casting LS, followed by EB+Nova means I'm doing the whole thing under +100% Dam, thus circumventing the idea of ever needing to take Aim at all. A new term has been developed during my time running this too: Spawn Collection. Whenever a mob runs off and Tornado chases, the mob dies (or runs back) and Tornado comes back (with it), any spawn Tornado ran into... comes with too, and now I've melded one spawn into two, and I've had this happen into an entire room without having to move from a core location. Wasn't intentional, but it was amusing. Who needs a Tank, I have a Tornado! So for anyone on the fence about which or why or how, it all works b-e-a-u-tifully, and here is v3.0: Patch Update for May to July: The main thread is getting a bit too long at this point for me to keep being able to update edits with all the builds, so I'll stick to trying to direct-link in the relevant posts as they come up. Mechanic Bending Dark/Rad/Dark Sentinel and SS/Rad Brute build (that translates to Tanker) for extreme damage buffing: May 3rd 2020 Nature/Energy Blast Defender build: May 22nd 2020 Mad King Peacebringers (Single and Tri both): May 31st 2020 This post had a Beast/Nature MM and an Energy/Atomic Blaster in it I never bumped into the main thread: October 27th (2019) Given this post is too buggy to keep revisiting, I will link out to a post deeper in as my edit-point for updated builds: which is here. Minor thing I noticed when a page has an excess of spoiler fields and a direct-post-link is used the forum loads the whole of the post (un spoiled) and then recloses the fields after load which alters the position of the scroll-point in the browser. If you click one of the above links, you may need to scroll up a tad and find my post with the info. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do about that.

Nah, you've got it pieced together pretty well. The area where you're falling short right now, that I didn't on Beta is the fact that Pineapple Server is carrying a beta test buff for Maneuvers on Tanks too, which doesn't (obviously) reflect in Mid's yet. You'll see another ~2% up which rounds out your F/C/E/N to 45%, and your resistances are in the 80's for S/L, so all your basis are pretty covered, especially with absorb stacking on all that. You went a bit over board on the proc side of the things. There's absolutely no accuracy in over half of your stuff, let alone no additional endurance reduction or damage enhancement. You want to balance the transition from damage to proc enhancement based on when the next damage enhancer is less value than a single proc adds. Typically you'll be looking at 3-4 procs maximum, and then rely on that last 2 slots to fill acc/dam/end in some fashion. Right now only 3 of your 9 abilities have enough accuracy to hit just a +3, barely, and everything else will struggle against even just a basic white minion. Pull back on your proc saturation a bit.

Dark: Most survivable set Fire: Massively offensive, takes some balancing Rad: AoE centered, more rounded than Fire, comes with rech Elec: Solid resistance set, packs a multitude of endurance management tools Shield, Invulnerability, Bio Armor, and Willpower are blended sets (primary focus in resistances for one thing, defense for the other). But I'm with @Frosticus on this one, what're you hoping to achieve, what's the goal? Each set has its own strengths and weakness. Technically, with IO's, you can still pack in a ton of defense into resistance based sets, so you're not necessarily giving that feature up by converting over.

First I will say this: I lump summed my response to Jolly's statement of " No sets, no accolades, no level shift, no outside pets." Beyond that, it isn't impossible, or inconceivable that a player could (might, I mean, I've never seen someone go the distance, but they could) play an SO build in Incarnate content, wholly exclusive of IO's. Past that, I'm not certain that your example really works. I do get what you're trying to imply with it, but IO's or not, there's actually just a natural disparity between Energy Blast and Fire Blast. Well, frankly there's a canyon, but at least it's a small one. Anyway, there's a natural difference in damage performance, sure, but IO's actually help Energy enhance its performance in unique ways that Fire can't through the KB IO's specifically. That's an entire extra category of procs that Fire doesn't have a... cce... ss ... to... Actually, I really don't like you right now* /em opens Mids. ;walks away lost in thought about a 300% recharge Energy Build.

If you're talking about the most recent one done by Kaeladin, that was entirely done with IO's, as was the foundation his work was started from. If you're referring to the stuff started up by Hopeling and Galaxy Brain, they're doing both SO and IO variance. Even when using just SO's they showed the disparity of TW against other sets (as an example of known indifference in the IO world). As an honest question, at what stage in the process does it matter to test the improvement of a Tank's performance (from a damage scale) between SO and IO? Irregardless of either, the variance is notable, testable, variable compared to existing frame work. What exactly are you under the impression is tested in the wrong? I have to assume, this being the Rage thread, you're referring to the Rage changes that, per Captain Powerhouse, are being rolled back irregardless. None of the changes that were made make what was done any less possible on the currently live server outside of the base-line damage buff to the entire AT. Why do you think SOs, a portion of the game that have only existed alone from Issue "0" to Issue 8, when IO's have been in this game since Issue 9, should be the base line going forward? Officially, at sunset, we had 23 active Issues, which means the greater portion of the game included IO's (14 versus "9"). Should I not try and test and validate the condition that IO's impact the game when talking about any kind of change? Everything that I have tested is extensively documented between Beta and on a thread in the Tanker section, including the associated builds, and videos. No, they are not SO builds, because no, in this environment, I personally do not see what value testing on SO's actually brings to the table. I also do not see what value testing without Incarnates adds to the table as that too is an aspect of the game that is easily accessible, and functionally improves the foundation of a build no differently than another basic SO would. But, again, what specifically are you referring to, because if it is the Rage changes, nothing was done to Rage in the testing environment that changed its performance from a damage perspective, purely only on the negative Defense/Resistance standpoint, which would've actually benefited all builds, irregardless of SO/IO. If you want to impose that restriction on IO's, you would have to do the same for SO's as not everyone is, nor does, slot their builds the same way. You can only judge for an approximation mean value and work your way from there. When the original Devs said "balanced on SO's" it was to show that, at the very most basic level, the game could be played without investing in the IO world, and could functionally build and play any character at its core principles. This is also why there are "basic" IO's available to players. They give a mildly improved value over SO's (no different than such as Hami-O's did), and can be slotted under the same premise, and were designed to help transition an SO player into an IO build, and the concepts of IO builds. The foundation of multi-layered enhancements wasn't new, though, because we did have the Hamidon Origin's already intermixing and changing up the dynamic, yet no one ever says "Gotta balance on HO's." At the end, many new sets were clearly designed around IO functionality and interconnection, and all of the content we were seeing coming down the pipeline was intended for "End Game" play, which was pushing more reliance on having (at minimum) a basic/fundamental IO build. It just wouldn't be possible to blanket-statement anymore that the original devs weren't shifting the balance of the game to work with IO's.

Off topic, but I'd be super curious to see how TW would perform if we took away the animation adjustment of Momentum. Leave the trigger and duration there for Follow Through and Whirling to activate, but don't alter the animation times of anything else in the swing of things. I'd wager that brings the set down in a pretty heavy order. Hmm, actually, I think I could. The adjustments would mean Whirling Smash would be higher DPA than Arc at that point, and so would Crushing Blow. I could just run Rend > FT > WS > CB > FT and it'd be as if the variance was removed. Hmm, I might try that. EDIT: Okay, I don't know if this is better or worse 🤣 But I popped onto Pineapple real quick and tested that chain. 3:09 to take down a Pylon with Hybrid Assault Core on, and then 3:20 without it. I mean, at least that moved it down to be more in line with the "upper" tier of "normal" current Tank times I've explored, but... that's still just running purely on its own merits, and some of those other better performers were still working with the added +Dam and -Res of Bio Armor to get their 3:00 windows.

Don't you have Teleport? 😉 I kid, I kid. I just wanted to make sure that was in the consideration and not missed cause I about missed it myself not being an avid fan of Stone Armor. The fact that any amount of the -ToHit can be resisted at all is why I personally looked to pad as many relevant defense sources first. For the most part I'd expect your basic content wont really run into much issue. It'll be a few potential mobs in Incarnate content, and AV's specifically that'll threaten to cut that down (up to 50% in worst case). If you're boiled down to just an AV though, I'd imagine there's less concern in that situation 1v1 when you have such a high volume of resistances to rely on. Cumulatively we ended up at similar values in the end (63.3% v 62.4% live), but the buff to Maneuvers should add another ~2.5% to that in favor of actual defense, instead of resistible -ToHit. The one-offs like I had in Foot Stomp, that's really just a convenience thing from when I was testing. A single winter-o, catalysed has the same value as +5 boosting a correlating IO of the same combo type. Building in the game with cost, yeah, it's not Inf-wise to purchase for that purpose. Small side-tangent on that, to me I have a bit of a Jeff Bezos moment with Inf and Time in that slotting and +5'ing an IO is prohibitive to just buying the Winter O catalysed and putting it in the build. 😅 I tend not to really consider the physical costs of any singular IO/Set anymore. The set bonuses when you start stacking them can be worth purchasing, though. Two Superior Frozen Blasts, as an example, net 15% Slow Resistance. I had also done a build version with Boxing slotted up instead of having the Widow in there, with an additional two Winters that put the build at 50% Resistance to Slow. I also explored whether it was possible to get a reasonable amount of Psionic resistance into the build. If I sacrificed all aspects of proc-minded building, I could actually get ~52% in there while keeping all the current features of the build (besides, of course, the procs).

All this question does is incite chaos. I'm not making the statement that Super Strength is the second strongest set because it's a good thing, I'm stating it as a bad thing, because it sits there alongside another set that is knowingly broken, but lacks a solution to correct. I am also making that statement to bring truth to the situation that so many people have either hid behind, or denied this entire time. I am actively stating it needs to be balanced, which in this case does mean nerf. So please don't try and turn that into anything more, we have enough of it already.

Some thoughts: Pretty safe to assume that so long as you keep cycling into CP, KO-B and Foot Stomp you'll live under the +100% of FF+Rech. That was my experience testing SS repeatedly. I'd go pretty long stretches with stacked triggers and spend 20+ seconds at a time under its effects. It'll be up often enough that you'll compensate the debuff on yourself and still be within 70-80/s on layering Rage. I also worked in Assault and Maneuvers in there because of the Leadership changes that should come down the pipeline (if they don't get nulled/rolled back) for Tanks. Getting to a target of 59% equivelant defense for Incarnate content is going to be pretty important if you want to account for your defense at all. A lot of stuff debuffs defense, and 45% will just get chewed up in a heartbeat. Maneuvers (as on Beta) should put the build at ~50%, and Darkest Night will carry that padded weight above 60% and give a little debuff wiggle-room. Assault, in this case, will also end up helping to nullify the self-inflicted -Dam effect as well, giving a "0" to start at (meaning more impact value on Rage, especially with the Gaussian's Proc). Oh, also go you nearly 500% Regen. Mud Pots? Already has an Immobilize component in the aura doesn't it?

The bigger aspect about validating Melee sets wasn't like it was with Defenders and Controllers. Blast sets, as an example, have far less proc potential (overall) comparatively than Melee does, and I had to go through and find the optimal choices. Same thing with Controllers, not all of them had the same variety, and there were a lot more unique aspects about those sets. As @Bopper pointed out, simply put, all Melee has a ton of proc options (and not just damage based ones). Melee, on the other hand, is a glutton for procs in every single set. We also, thanks to a lot of previous testing, already have a pretty good idea how these are going to work, and there aren't really any "unique" powers or triggers among them that necessitated individual attention, but there were a couple of sets (SS and TW, actually) that had a unique mechanic that did something arbitrarily different that needed to be checked in accordance with how it interacted with procs. To be specific: Rage, and its crash (how do procs shift that set, and do they considerably offset that crash), then TW, and its Momentum mechanic, could a proc build be made without sacrificing what it takes to make that a power house set. In general the bigger thing was finding secondaries that could supplement/support a proc build the most effectively, which is how I landed on SD, RA, IA, SR, WP, and BA. The secondary attack sets were never categorized and slimmed down like that, I only just picked from my build bucket and worked through it. I wasn't passing a specific set up for any one reason, although I did try and create a unique combination for each practical test, but I was only originally focused on six defense sets, and there are A LOT of attack sets for Tanks/Melee. I'll also point out something that helps determine what's possible across the board because of its testing success: Being able to build the optimal ST attack chain with TW, and maintain a good portion of its proc potential means that every single melee set is capable of achieving its optimal chain, and be proc focused. As far as memory serves the TW attack chain is the most demanding from a recharge stand point because you have to narrow down a lot of attacks into a 3/s cooldown from a 10+/s base, which is difficult when you're trying to avoid putting physical enhancement in the power itself. The other thing is showed me (us) is that even in the event that I couldn't get the optimal chain, the procs in that state so wildly benefited the set that they compensate most of what I lost by not having it perfected. Hopefully that helps put perspective on the larger picture. If you're lumping my posted builds together there, yeah, that's not something uniquely specific beyond "I just like the picture more." There are several of the +Dam procs in the Hold sets, and in the realm of how many pack into a single attack, it really ends up become dealer choice when they all have the same 3.5ppm base for the normal procs. The purple sets have a higher PPM value at 4.5, and those will get favored over a regular 3.5 proc because they have both a higher damage value, and a higher probability potential to fire (in a lot of cases we're capping out most of this stuff to its 90% anyway, but still, the fact remains). Another reason worth looking at keeping a variable variety is in the damage type that each proc does. I wouldn't want to load up all on one damage type because if I run into a faction that has a high(er) resistance to that one, I'm going to be seriously hampering my impact entirely. If I choose to mix the selection up (Negative, Smashing, Lethal, Psionic), then I get more variance in total potential, maybe even hit a type their weak against, without gimping the entire line up of procs. Yes I could, in the case of some holds where there could be both Ghost Widow's and Neuro, put both, but I'm doubling down on the Psionic and there's enough cases in Incarnate content where I might see some significant pushback against that, and a few other factions that have some reasonable resistance to Psi damage. I'd rather one proc get cut in half than two, and with diversity, one of the others might just be the alt type the faction IS weak against! It's all about balance. Thanks for reading 🙂

TL;DR I can't. There's not a lot that procs are going to necessarily change from a play stand point. You might find some new tricks and fun times with old powers that felt a bit stagnate, but it's not like a lot of these are going to be dramatically altered. Not like Dimension Shift, or how Mass Confusion can get loaded up with a few damage procs and suddenly becomes a small-burst AoE, or Ice Arrow is now a main-chain attack doing more DPS than half a Defender's normal attacks. There's just not as many surprise findings in Melee AT's compared to just "now it works better than before!" Off the top of my head, these are probably the most relevant responses I can give: Radiation Armor/Spines was the most pleasant validation of just being a proc-aoe-monster. It worked exactly as I'd expected, and it was beautiful Titan Weapons was a numb experience of "yup, that did what I expected... literally to the second predicted its performance." /em rolleyes Energy Melee was the only set that I said "wow" that actually really improved the set! Super Strength is broken and is the second most powerful set in the game behind TW. All I did was prove it needs nerfed (as in: fixed). I don't particularly feel great about that.

I don't know why, but this made me think of Kaiju, and Godzilla, and now I really really want a Radiation Control set.

It most certainly is. Super Strength is demonstrably overpowered in its current state, and I’ve tested, recorded, and showed that data earlier in this thread. Both in ST and AoE capacity, SS is currently only held second to Titan Weapons. The reason people talk about the Pylon challenge is because it is a focused test for single target DPS against a static target. To demonstrate that I wasn’t building against a singular purpose, all my builds were posted, and also tested in +4/x8 scenarios, solo. If you want a more specific look at it, I posted additional discussion on it in the Tanker Proc Monster thread. In all the tests and data I’ve worked with, none have matched SS under double stacked Rage except TW that exceeded it. I also tested it on both Tanks and Brutes to validate.