Sir Myshkin

I didn't designate a specific test to that build as A). It's a build I've already played extensively, and B). There's nothing significant about any of its abilities that warranted specific attention. The Fire/* part of the equation is all super straight forward and doesn't really contain any pertinent or special proc choices, and everything in */FF is very limited in its options. Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb are the only two that get any bang-for-buck on procs, and sadly Force Bolt is easily trumped by a power like Arcane Bolt when it comes to damage, utility, and same-for-same proc inclusion. The only reason I included a build for it at all is because I was personally invested in it, and figured I'd just share it since I'd built it anyway.

There isn’t really a way to quantify a ranking system here. This isn’t some kind of FOTM thing, but an experiment in what/how procs change the dynamic for each AT. Sets that have access to wider varieties will see more significant impact, of course. Take Defenders as an example, with blast sets there are very few that actually have a worthwhile assortment at their disposal. Controllers on the other hand have a pretty wide margin for most of the sets. All 100% tested, this isn’t a theory craft discussion, but verified and proven builds/sets. In in regards to Illusion, that set (like Ice) is somewhat limited in what Procs are realistically going to do because it has so few powers that even have options for them. The most you can really get is a stronger ST hold, a confuse that actually packs some damage, and the ability to turn the AOE hold into a damage dealing AoE (which, with its recharge, is still stuck as situational limited use). You can still achieve Perma-PA even with making these proc alterations.

I didn’t even turn the defense toggles on, nor even put them in my tray. I focused and fully invested in Resists alone. Get into a rough enough spot and that may not play out well in some cases, but I was cycling all three Rad clicks, the heal one typically only when I needed it though. The healing from Radiation Therapy alone was generally sufficient if I was patient enough. It just really isn’t reasonable to try and build defense into a build like this when if forced you to sacrifice your attack slot choices to do it. kind of one of those things where you gotta pick a choice going in, defensive (sets) or procs. Being at 90% Resists also helps not worrying about defense. I doubt I’d try and do the same thing on a Scrapper.

Tank Testing Update #4 I think I may have finally built one of the purest forms of a Proc Monster. Rad Armor/Spines (Soul). With eight abilities stacked 4-5, and five more stacked with 1 each (limited), any ability that could've had some kind of proc in it, does. Built purely for resistance, and it works like a champ. Given this set is massively focused on AoE, I decided to use its clearing ability, in combination with a survival test, by tossing it head-first into a Comic-Con farm. Lots of enemies, lots of opportunity to get myself knocked out if I play my cards right (over aggro, attack with cones past, get threat to spill over and trade with other enemies). Definitely saw my health bar going back and forth, but never felt in any danger as I was cycling my three Rad clicks constantly, and the one being used as an AoE attack just happens to contain recovery/regen options as well. It's fairly easy to get Radiation Armor up to Res cap on several of its components, with the remainders being decent. Cold and Psionic are the weak points for this set, and there really wasn't much I could do about patching either of those with this kind of build plan. The other short-coming was Recharge. This build doesn't exactly need a huge amount because it can cycle a lot of stuff, but when it's surrounded Beta Decay gets to take over and give a nice solid jump, and then Ripper with a FF+Rech smooths the curve over. My goal with procs/Beta/rech was to get Hasten to a perma-state, and the build can achieve that without Ageless. It can also achieve an insane value of Recovery (EPS), I think at one point I hit 9/eps. Ageless ends up only existing just to speed up the cycles a tad bit further. That also opens up other Destiny options if a player wanted. Lets break this down... Radiation Therapy A regen debuff, a regen debuff resistance debuff, a heal, a recovery boost, and a minor damage kick. This is a pretty diverse ability, and interestingly the core of its function has nothing to do with the damage part, it just sits as a thematic bonus that opens a window for us to do something absurd: proc the heck out of it. The power has a super fast cast (1.188 Arcana), a chunk of end, and a super-high accuracy. With a high enough global there's almost nothing inherently necessary to do with this ability. It looks to be very tasty with the idea of adding heal or end-mod to it, but out of the box it's going to be pretty great. I chose to avoid doing anything other than focusing on flooding this thing with procs... There's about 12 utility/damage (mostly damage) procs that this ability can be suited with. That majority are damage focused tools, but a couple of others like KD, Absorb, -Res, are included in that package as well. This is a pretty open-game ability. If I wanted to up my mitigation/control ability tossing one of several KD procs would be an option, or the Tanker AT-O +Absorb just to focus on the two prominent choices. My opt here was damage, damage, damage. At the +4 range, things get naturally resisted a bit, so those 71 pt procs are going to get scaled down into the mid 50's against 54's. The best thing to do here, especially with that base 60/s recharge, is get a -Res into this ability as it'll have a killer probability; one Fury of the Gladiator to help all those procs roll better on the damage front. I also ultimately decided to toss in the +Absorb proc from the AT-O to help build survival, and also kick a small Rech in there. There's a tiny window of flexibility with this power starting at 60/s, and I wanted to creep it closer to 15/s without going over board. The rest gets filled with whichever +Dam procs you want (I'd suggest start with the exotic types first). In practical application not every proc goes off every single time, but here's a small snapshot: The average ended up being 3.5, a lot of 3's, a lot of 4's, just on the damage aspect. The -Res aspect was pretty consistent, about 75%. And the ability itself looks to have a 10 target cap. Against level 54 enemies, 178-220 damage per target is pretty significant. Then on top of that it was doing a 206 heal with a 41.23 kick on each target hit (so 618 pt heal). Oh, and its a DoT for the Therapy damage, so that former range is just the immediate burst, not including the follow-up minor hits. Ground Zero This ability is in the same boat as Radiation Therapy in terms of having a boat load of utility/damage procs available to it, but unlike RT, it doesn't have an insanely boosted accuracy, and the recharge is much longer (90/s base), so we're likely to need some course correction here. I have Tactics worked into the build (and that's got a slight buff based on current patch on the Test server), so I tossed in a purple Acc/Dam/Rech to help along a bit. Mainly focused on getting accuracy good on +3. GZ has a bit longer animation compared to RT, but is somewhat in line with an average PBAoE effect. That aside, for a probable damage over animation time, GZ and RT have the highest DPA in the set (excluding Epics/Gloom). So despite its longer animation, and partially committed probability, even in ST situations this power should get used because of how hard it's going to effectively hit. Speaking of, I'm not sure what the hit-cap is on this ability. I pulled just one instance out of the combat log from a single activation and it came back with 28: In the situation of something like the Comic Con farm where you're surrounded by far more can even aggro on you, this turned that power into a beast, and every single time I activated it my combat log just became this rocket-ship of data going "SCROOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL" for eternity. Didn't help that with things like Quills going off in there too, there were constant jumps of "Here... JUMP! JUMP! data data JUMP!" It made trying to follow along nearly impossible, and even though I recorded it, the log literally skips in burst chunks so there's no way of even keeping up with it. 90/s base recharge, minor rech improvement, this ability rides at the probability cap of 90%, and it sees a lot of mileage from 5 procs. This thing is hitting for 300-350 damage depending on whether there's any -Res going on. And it's doing it to a WIDE range. Quills Damage auras are a troublesome concept when it comes to procs. We can drop a bunch in them, but the aura's themselves run on the Toggle formula, so one check every 10/s, despite the aura itself potentially having a pulse effect (like Quills every 2/s). It's also painful obvious when this power misses because it goes off so often. Originally I only went with two slots devoted to enhancement, I ended up shifting a fourth over with Scirocco's Dervish in order to bump a 9% global Accuracy onto the build and balance the power out a bit more. That still leaves three total procs in the aura which is pretty decent. I figure I usually saw at least a few in each cycle, but it may not be enough for some to warrant to added benefit. Personally, for this specific kind of power, I tend not to (maybe one, in this case, as it completed a 4-set for the accuracy bump). At a minimum, the power needs 3-4 slots to function well (Acc/Dam/End). Spine Burst This power needs at least three slots devoted to just getting its act in line with Accuracy (and Dam/End), this needs to hit consistently as it's going to be the key most bread-and-butter power used every ~6/s. Past that it gets six +Dam procs to play with. This is probably the most important and most-used ability in this build, and was the one I deemed the most relevant to tossing the Overwhelming Force KD proc into. Every burst becoming a guaranteed PBAoE KD ring is an incredible addition of mitigation, and I'd say one of the biggest factors in helping me stay alive but just soft-controlling the incoming potential damage by keeping this falling over. 16/s base recharge, 3/s cast, this thing riding at nearly 20/s total is going to have a pretty decent probability overall. Ripper The Tanker changes on Test right now include a cone-widening effect for abilities that fall below a certain threshold (such as Ripper does) that ends up widening and extending its coverage to improve AoE possibilities on Tanks without dramatically altering any one specific attack. It is an interesting blanket-mechanic-fix that was used. As much as I dislike the animation personally, it becomes a necessary power for Spines because it lacks strong ST performance. Ripper happens to be a generally strong attack in general, and the modifications on Test turn this into a pretty huge swing. When I boiled down to just a group of Bosses, tossing Ripper over and over is what allowed me to mow through them more efficiently. Didn't even need to reposition for cone effect, the alterations made this thing pretty much bleed all over the place. The only spot in the build with access to FF+Rech, definitely include it here because any activation on a per-minute basis is going to help this build. Just one 5/s trigger is enough to balance out Hasten (w/ Ageless, or in general w/o if it can get multiple triggers per minute), and also bring Radiation Therapy into the sub-15/s zone and Ground Zero into the sub-30/s zone. Probability wise, somewhere around 60%. Got a fair amount of double-procs when Ripper hit, but there were enough offset 1's with fewer 3's that it's just not quite 2/3 consistently in practice (thus 60%). I'm only going to spend so much time validating 82,310 lines of combat log from just one hours worth of play. Effective Testing Since I decided to use the Comic Con farm in AE as the testing ground for this, I'm pretty confident in its survivability, as well as general performance. I was able to clear +4/8 (No Boss) in 7:00 minutes pretty comfortably (no pressure, speeding, intentional herding). When I added Bosses in, for metric, I ended up with 8:30, those things really slowed the process despite making concerted effort to horde the Bosses up as I cleared each mass of spawns until I was sitting on 6-7 Bosses and whittled them down collectively between AoE's and Ripper extensively. I also wanted to see what an even-con baseline was like so I turned the difficult back to "0" and ran in to packs of 50's; that only took 4:43/s (w/ Bosses), so almost half the time as the previous. By the end of my test run I had collected a level and a half of XP and moved on to other ventures. For more practical (and consistent) testing application, I went back into the RWZ and collected up some level 54 Rikti and mowed them over, for comparison's sake. They all moved pretty quickly, as expected. When there's not hordes of enemies trying to stand on top of you, one or two "small" 10-16 sized spawns seem down right easy. Lets not forget, either, the (now traditional) attempt at a Pylon. We must remember that Spines is primarily an AoE driven set, I went into this thought process with full anticipation that it'd be terrible and I'd likely give up the attempt early. I put Gloom into the build to give stronger ST ranged attack over Impale, and also to help general ST performance, but between that, the RadArmor AoE's packing a ton of heat, and a plethora of -Res procs, the Pylon ended up being a lot easier than I expected it to. When I chose a Hybrid Assault to slot, I dropped in the double-proc one thinking more in terms of AoE than ST concept; I ended up accidentally triggering the Hybrid during the run, but it ended up not being as huge a swing in my favor as I'd thought the hiccup would be. There's definitely a speed variance between up and down, but not in a way that it made a huge difference. Without it the DPS traction was more in line with a 5:30 time, with it though I ended up getting 4:43, but I only activated it the one time (so no second trigger after four minutes when it popped back up). There's a lot of potential to play around with best potential chains here though. Throw Spines with the -Res proc could do for Spines what Shockwave does for Claws by opening up greater long-term potential, but it doesn't have quite as good a DPA as we'd want. I initially went in with a chain of Barb > Gloom > Barb > Ripper, with RT and GZ activated over Barb in the rotation. What's interesting is Barb Swipe is actually the best ST attack that Spines has, and if not for the fact that I really wanted to keep opportunities maxed for getting FF+Rech going for RT/GZ, I'd probably swap their activations with Ripper as it's got slightly lower potential output. I do have footage of the test, I'll sift through it and see about maybe putting something together. Maybe a few highlights out of the Comic Con, and then the Pylon run. Build: Radiation Armor/Spines (Soul) Tank:

Took a few minutes tonight to go run off and respec my Scrapper after neglecting to the process for... quite a while now (nearly two months). Figured I'd get all the kinks out of a fresh respec and go knock down a few pylons! RM/Dark/Soul Scrapper T3 Core Musculature, Ageless, Degenerative, and Hybrid Assault. Two times: 5:15 - Passive Hybrid 3:39 - Active Hybrid Build is focused on overall performance, and not one specific singular task. There's nothing in the game, currently, I haven't been able to throw at it. Pretty hyped, those are solid times for not being a fully "completed" Incarnate yet.

It won’t be so black and white unfortunately. When you put Procs into the equation, better -Res values on Defenders will better support a Defender build versus a Corr, regardless of +Dam capabilities. Being solo, you’ll also never hit damage cap outside of Kinetics, so that’s not even a consideration for most choices. In several cases their variance can/will be very little. You more have to decide which set do you access to more of your abilities sooner. If you were teaming, the Corr may see better (overall) benefit, but in a solo scenario, in my experiences/testing, I’d say the Defender option is going to be the better choice. Defenders don’t just get better debuffs, they get better buffs, and that includes values in toggles like Tough and Weave, Leadership, etc.

I agree with this. When I was averaging 3-4:00 minute times with the improvement buffs, this was still a comfortable zone, but finding a path to push that to breaking below 2:00, it definitely didn’t sit right. My request to test the proposed change was under the intent to essentially need the state of Rage/SS while giving it relevant teaming and solo purpose with the bruise concept. That would give it the ability to still stay a stronger set, but with the intent of dramatically bringing it back down. With sets like Bio Armor I’d anticipate it to still be a tad over the normalcy, but definitely not able to breach the same scale as this. So are you referring to Weaken Resolve in this? It lists -15%, is this not correct then? Gloom doesn’t have any -Res component. Even if -15% is over, it’s contribution in the scenario isn’t as significant as it may seem. It was poorly timed on my part and only shaved 8-16/s off of my attempts that didn’t include the ability. I think it’s also a bit worth mentioning I didn’t have to slot the ability for anything. Global brought it down below its duration, Rage gave me enough to-hit to cover accuracy, and its end cost was so low that Tank recovery more than compensates its base, unenhanced value. The core of what procs did here is stabilize between the existing crashes, but they are not the whole of how this particular build is hitting these values. I’ve already talked about several proc-based builds in my Tanker thread on this topic, so I already have a baseline to measure against. Others have posted about making this same kind of Bio/SS build and their performance, with different (less stressed) proc focus, and gotten similar >3:00 times. If I gave up some of my rules on how the proc builds are built, I could stress more damage and try and find another avenue to get into Achilles Heel. Won’t necessarily get to this same level, but we’re talking about specifically abusing the fact that between Hybrid and 2xRage, I’m achieving 400% +Damage, neither of which procs benefit from. And I’m doing it solo.

Why do we have a Rage crash? Oh yeah, it's to nerf Rage. Can I break 2:00 on a Pylon? Yeah, actually, I can if I tailor a bit more specific to ST performance and through some caution out of the wind into a specialist build. Just came back from Pineapple after trialing LBE with -Res. That turned out to be garbage (LBE's DPA isn't nearly comparable to Gloom, even with the -Res); had static times. Swapped back to Gloom and tossed the new Force of Will, Weaken ability for some -Res. Full kit with Hybrid toggled on: 2:04 2:09 After this point it's getting to the point where I'm specializing the build for a ST specific expectation, possibly loosing other needed values like defense (couldn't add CJ, pool cap). This brings up question marks for me, as I'm achieving this solo, and when Hybrid is involved like this, edging, to potentially cracking 400% +Damage. If I played without it, it'd be feasible for me to carry a tray of t3 reds and be fairly vicious for a Tank without additional team support. I feel like the factor of so many tools being stackable, the fact that Rage even has a crash at all has become nothing more than a 10/s window of "Slow that guy down." When I was running LBE inclusive tests my Rage crashed right at the tail end of a Pylon. Had it happened just two seconds later, the Pylon would've exploded, but it didn't, and I was stuck working through an extra 15/s because the server ticked and the Pylon gained a chunk of HP. This has me coming down to a thought process, after having spent hours testing the change to Rage: I don't see the point in it having a Crash at this stage, at all. I also don't see the point in double stacking it as it's putting SS into a position to do "game-breaking" things like can be done with a high-recharge-yield Titan Weapon. The problem in this, however, is the fact that the crash cannot be removed because it is the only thing stopping me from fully performing at Titan Weapon levels. There is a version I would like to be able to test and compare as a potential resolution to the Super Strength conundrum, one that may potentially serve as a unified solution also for Scrappers to be able to port SS for effectively. This is, of course, at the discretion of the associated responsible Dev if this could be reviewed: Balance Jab's base damage to compare with other T1 attacks in other primarily-single-target sets (37.37). It is currently considerably poor in the damage department and makes it a forced, wasted power selection. Rage: Reduce the duration to 60/s, maintain cool down of 240/s, To-Hit and Damage percentages. Remove all forms of a crash and give the ability a -Recovery equivalent to 0.50 EPS on top of its cost to activate that lasts 60/s. Change the name to "Focused Might" with the description: "You channel your superior strength to make every hit count, putting more force into each focused attack. Your intense concentration makes you hyper aware of your enemy movements and allows you to find key targets to strike. Your To-Hit and Damage will be significantly improved, but this intense state is taxing, and will take a toll on your stamina." This functionally allows for the ability to be made "perma" with appropriate high levels of recharge. In team scenarios it may become possible to overlap for short periods of time (5-10/s best case). Add a Bruising effect based on one of two considerations (one easy, one which may require extra lifting to steal the mechanic and code it into SS): More Complicated -- Bruise Stacks: Every attack builds up the chance to inflict significant harm, weakening the afflicted targets and bruising them quickly. All Super Strength damaging abilities have a 75% chance to add 1 stack, to a max of 5 (10/s durations), with each stack causing an unresistable -3% Resistance (-15% total). Improvement to Hurl Boulder for this, to make taking the power more validated: For each Bruise stack on target enemy, Hurl Boulder does 5% more damage. Knockout Blow: This attack instantly bruises your target, dealing -5% Resistance (5/s) Scrapper variant of SS, instead of Bruise Stacks, Critical Stacks, build up stacks that enhance critical chance/damage Less Complicated -- Add a bruising effect to Knock Out Blow of -5% Resistance on target, a -5% Resistance effect to Jab (validates this forced pick) Punch, and Haymaker. A -10% Resistance value to Hurl Boulder, including a slight damage increase. The inclusion of a -Res component gives the ability to flex for the shift in Rage and still balance. It'll improve ST performance for the Tank, but also allow them to provide a unique method of support to the team dynamic.

Posted a longer edition of the following in the correlating thread on the Tanker sub section, but figured I'd mention this here too since it is relevant to the current state of Rage/SS and there's a slightly different crowd watching this thread: "Some times to chew on... I went in and cycled in and out of Hybrid Assault. Originally took on a couple of initial Pylons, and then just kind of said "Eh, screw it, lets see how many I can clear in 30 minutes." I got down to nine before they started popping over. I didn't pull all the times, and I even tried tossing in Foot Stomp for a bit to see if it helping provide FF+Rech procs would help balance my time spent in exceeded recharge. Did enough that my time shift was just ~10/s from not using it. 2:28 2:20 2:24 2:42* 2:18*/** 2:46* 2:44* 2:20 2:12** 2:32 *Used Foot Stomp **Hybrid On" "Quoted" out of my other post. Bio/SS (Soul) Proc-built Tank. T4 Incarnates used in the test (Musculature, Ageless, Degenerative, Hybrid Assault Cores), Rage Double Stacked at all times. Bio provides a more consistent and unique aspect to getting into -Res effects than I could do on Willpower, also was able to push the boundary of +Dam a bit further. The Willpower I tested on the first time tapped out at 194%, this build based at 219%, with the Gaussian's Proc set in Rage to go off post-crash to spike 5/s of 299% for a peak output without Hybrid on. With Hybrid active I tipped very close to 400% (I think 390-something%). I dunno, I might intentionally add LBE and sack my travel power to squeeze it in just to see what another -20% Res does. I'm already in spitting distance of Titan Weapons at this point, just need more -Res to get there.

I was meaning to refer to this, my apologies. I'm incredibly tired at this point in the night and just wanted to get the post up.

Wasn't really planning on rebuilding Super Strength given I still have like four other builds to run through, but this has kind of become a thing, I suppose, to really see where the break down is with Super Strength. Anyway, my Bio Armor blank doesn't support as much global recharge as the Willpower did by about 18% difference (trying to recall off the top without looking, 234 versus 251...er, sorry, 134 versus 151, got too used to seeing it bumped). That's still enough that there's about a 1/s variance still on KO Blow. Due to limitations of power space, I couldn't keep LBE in (really wanted that extra -20% Res to try out) so swapped for Gloom. Good damage, still isn't -Res, but whatever it's basically the go-to chain-fill attack for a Tank at this point (IMO). Edit to Clarify: This is Bio/SS (Soul) Tank being tested, T4 Musc, Ageless, Degen, Hybrid Assault Cores... Some times to chew on... I went in and cycled in and out of Hybrid Assault. Originally took on a couple of initial Pylons, and then just kind of said "Eh, screw it, lets see how many I can clear in 30 minutes." I got down to nine before they started popping over. I didn't pull all the times, and I even tried tossing in Foot Stomp for a bit to see if it helping provide FF+Rech procs would help balance my time spent in exceeded recharge. Did enough that my time shift was just ~10/s from not using it. 2:28 2:20 2:24 2:42* 2:18*/** 2:46* 2:44* 2:20 2:12** 2:32 *Used Foot Stomp **Hybrid On There's about three times I didn't pull from my video, and the bottom three were a re-check after the fact, Normal, Hybrid On, Normal (respectively) for those last ones. I'm definitely not editing any of the footage, if folks want to see it I'll just straight upload it to Youtube as-is. Times are a pretty huge difference from before. More stable form of -Res out of Evolving Aura apparently. Didn't involve any of the new Origin Pool. DPS range on that is 378-418. On a Tank. Chain: Punch > Haymarker > Gloom > KOB > Haymaker > Punch Creeping on that 1:42 Hybrid Bio/TW time @Auroxis I also decided to take a shot at Comic Con AE since it is loaded up over on Pineapple. Set to +4/8 and whatever it'd throw at me. Finished the map in 7:30 (give or take few seconds). Funnily enough I realized, after a fashion, it wasn't anything but Bosses I was spending most of my time collecting them up and Foot Stomping huge spawns of Bosses to death. Edit #2: I didn't want to drop another post to this update since it was relevant to this information. Took the Bio/SS back on to Pineapple and tried out swapping Gloom for LBE w/ -Res and the times weren't very good. 2:45, 2:50, and 2:15 on a last one that I used Hybrid for. Shows me that, comparatively, LBE is kind of terrible by comparison of Gloom for performance. So I tried a different avenue and plugged Gloom back in, but took the new "Weaken" ability from Force of Will, and also Mighty Leap to see the "Takeoff" ability (disappointed it's just Foot Stomp). Revised from that, running Hybrid: 2:04 2:09 The fact that I can't bake the extra -Res in to my abilities is a suffrage point. Weaken doesn't have any damage component, and there's no real good way for me to monitor its up time since I need to be able to watch my own combat log for when Rage crash slides off to reapply, so Power Analyzer's off the table. Going this path also forces the loss of Combat Jumping, which sucks because it brings the build (in this case) below 45% on elementals. Not a real issue for non-proc builds, but that's a struggle point for sure. This is also super-reliant on the bump buff that Maneuvers got for Tanks. Without that, it's even worse. Biggest take away is that, yes, I probably could break below 2:00 for a time, and that's just stupid. I'll be discussing this particular aspect in the Beta thread for Rage.

The very reason why inspiration specifically can't be used in a test like this is because they completely invalidate this specific style of test. If anyone remembers CEBR self-farming technique, that was applicable to any given character. Basic premise was the stock up a full tray of Reds, burn a bunch, stock up again, walk into the AE mission and start rolling around at the damage cap. The map it used had ambushes and spawn triggers at the opening so that the player didn't have to go anywhere. Take Claws, hit level 6, cap the mission at level 6, and just collect the XP wave after wave. Took about 5-10 minutes to complete, restock, and then repeat over and over. It was possible to self-level (specifically a Claws/Elec Brute) in 6 hours. That particular mission was worth about three of the one being tested right now, and was run at x8 (no boss). Damage-Capping and walking into this mission... I'd doubt it'd take more than 2-3 minutes (depending on how quickly you herd).

Hmm, those times are interesting. When you mentioned Eviscerate it dawned on me that when I took my power selections, I passed over that one because I was still thinking in an IO world (and the general fact I hate that power), but it is a cone and would up the ante a bit in speed. I also favored recharge over damage in FU. I'm curious which is the more relevant difference. So far, though, looks like the world of SO's is balanced to 6:00. Edit: I went back out of curiosity and put Eviscerate into the build and ran a couple more missions: 5:01 <-- No Runners 5:28 <-- Runners (lots) 5:30 <-- Runners (lots) At that point it was pretty clear that if I had to chase down runners (what is Taunt even doing at that point?!) I was going to get stuck with that 5:30ish time and kinda said "Yup, I'm good." Eviscerate was the element of differential there for sure, cause I slotted Follow Up the same as I had before (recharge, not damage). If I targeted back in a spawn I could catch a lot more and didn't have to rely on Spin cycling so often. Still stuck to the tactic of jumping above the spawn to fire Shockwave down into it, and tried to keep Focus to tag runners, but just ended up with two or three skedaddling on me in opposite directions.

-Your build (since it throws more set bonuses in, especially purple sets) has more global recharge to pull off reducing that last 1.5/s needed to extract Punch from the chain. -Siphon... I think is -150% if I remember right. The impact on the Pylon is -.44% (-131.69 HP/s). The struggle point with hitting the Pylon's with -Regen is that it regens based off periodic server ticks, and not static growth like characters/players, and if that debuff falls off prior to the appropriate tick, whoops. That's one small factor in why I feel I got some shifty times with Energy Melee. It becomes super noticeable when you get near the end and that last sliver just. won't. go. -Are you using Ageless during the test? Given you can't really toggle that appropriately to get just the static base value, you'd have another 10% Global Rech in there that'd easily account for a slight off-ness in what you're looking at, versus what you get in practice. I also noticed you had the FF+Rech in both KOB and Hay, if your proc fell and you dropped down, that'd be another place you'd experience a delay. If you keep your combat stats displayed for your global rech, it's easier to watch for when you're up or down. I did, I just didn't collect it into a video. With as many videos as I've ended uploading, the edit times have grown unintentionally, trying to keep that down and is why I don't include that part of the process normally. Only did it with SS because of Rage and demonstrating Proc impact it. Your Foot Stomp is 167 (no +Dam procs and no Rage, 260.7 w/ 2xRage). Proc'd out Whirling Hands would do ~180 average, ~250 w/ BU (Gaussian Proc'd). Proc'd Foot Stomp, ~290 w/ 2xRage. Just using the Mid's probability data which is pretty inaccurate (under valued, it counts global in its formula when it shouldn't), but I don't have any other hard math figured for the abilities otherwise. And while not AoE specific, the fact that Energy Transfer hits for ~1,000 means I can tab through Bosses pretty fast. An even-con Boss is 2.5k HP (rounded up), if I hit it with ET, Whirling, tab off to a Lieut to hit it with BS/EP, tab back five seconds to the Boss and hit it again with ET, and another WH, it's probably dead, or a hair's breadth from dead, along with most of the minions at that point who can only take >500 points of damage, and likely that Lieut I punched, leaving maybe one or two other Lieuts in a spawn alive. At Even-Con I can clear a basic mission in less than 3:00 w/ Bosses in every spawn and one EB on the map (actually tested for that, strangely enough, and only the Bio/NrgM). Granted they're in the videos, but: Energy Melee: Energy Transfer > Bone Smasher > Gloom > Energy Punch > Bone Smasher Super Strength: Knockout Blow > Haymaker > Laser Beam Eyes > Punch > Haymaker Radiation Melee: Devastating Blow > Radioactive Smash > Gloom > Radioactive Siphon This doesn't have a vid: Stone Melee: Seismic Smash > Stone Fist > Heavy Mallet > Stone Fist > Hurl Boulder (with Arctic Breath cycled in as it comes up every 10-13/s) is what the build is capable of. Rylas tested that for me, time on it was 5:24. That was reliant on a test-build with Leviathan, that's not an optimal chain (but surprisingly still strong all together).

Looking over your build there's not really anything inherently wrong with it, but from a performance stand point, the Proc-loaded versions get to put out "more" damage. Were you using Jab as a primary attack? I suppose I should check more specifically on whether you did your test as a build on the Living Server, or was it done on Pineapple? I didn't catch that part. I assumed Pineapple, but if wasn't, you would've been working with Bruising still, which also skews the metric somewhat. Jab though, that's a pretty under powered attack; everything you would've gained from Gloom is just offset in how bad Jab is. I feel like if I build a Proc version of a Bio/SS to test, I'd just be trying to formulate a build that's struggling just to compete with Energy Melee for no reason. SS really bothers me in how it looks so much better than it unreasonably ends up performing.

Not home to be able to, but I'll add them to my update on the Tanker Proc Monster thread tonight; I forgot to add them last night when I posted the update. Any of the experimental builds I do get posted in the thread(s) related to the Proc testing at some point, with revised builds once the AT is concluded. Edit: Added them to the appropriate post. WP/SS in the most recent, and the Bio/NrgM was already posted in a previous update.

Honestly that sounds about right. When I toggled Hybrid on, that shift pushed me below 4:00, and by comparison of Bio Armor adding a similar inherent +Dam value. Were you leveraging any other -Res besides what Evolving Armor provides? I'd suspect that if I stacked Bio on to the SS half of the WP/SS I tested, including LBE with the additional -Res, that'd push even further. Also, single-stack or double-stack on Rage? Given the time, I'm assuming double. The contrast still exists though that you took Bio/SS (something I was considering testing tonight) and got a time frame that I did with Bio/NrgM. without the push of Rage. That just... doesn't add up in my head from a +Dam perspective.

Currently not 100% working as intended. May or may not even have recorded it... gotta double check that, but Orange circle popped, clicked, still had existing Rage buff, got nailed with "Weakened" crash anyway despite being given the "okay to go" orange circle. Had to completely wait out the +Dam buff dropping before being able to click Rage and move forward. You're in luck, I've done the testing. It doesn't. Stone Melee still falls marginally behind, or barely catches up to Super Strength in the current state In a one-Rage scenario, the two are fairly close. In a double-Rage scenario, SS jumps considerably ahead, but there's an interesting caveat to what I'm saying, and that's on the fact that these were done on builds that were maximized damage enhancement with loaded procs (3-4 per attack, between both builds). Yeah it doesn't actually hit that hard, I out performed a double-stacked-Rage Super Strength with Energy Melee. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a set designed around one interesting mechanic, but when the mechanic becomes a necessary power choice for the set to holistically perform instead of giving it unique mechanic twists, we see problems like this crop up. Look at Super Strength and then look at Dual Pistols and Bio Armor and you'll blindingly see the level of design skill that progressed from the early years of CoH to the later years when it came to integrating unique tools/abilities and how they inter-weaved with other abilities. Read all this and follow me to the end. Fun fact, FF+Rech in Haymaker and KO Blow, alongside 151% global recharge, I had consistent stacks of the proc and was able to effectively keep KO Blow on a ~5/s cooldown. Don't really need to ask for the change when it can be manually forced to comply in the current state of the game. Alright, we all still here? Great. Lets talk about this more holistically with some actual testing performed: This video is the current state of Super Strength, and as such, Rage. At not point what-so-ever will you see me, even for a glimpse, give one iota of care about the Rage Crash. Watch the Combat Logs, you'll see some surprising values popping out during that -9999.9^ when I pop KO Blow and still hit for 200+. I ran this with single Rage, and double-stack Rage to get a baseline idea of how Super Strength performed compared to several other tests in the recent two week window of these changes. I'm going to flat out say this: Super Strength, without Rage, is abysmal. The set must have an active Rage to be even remotely effective. The execution of changes to Rage, currently, removing the crash on a single-use of the ability is the most empirically effective way to make SS functional without considerable design overhaul to the remainder performance of the set. I can't really see what point there is in arguing that aspect, or a debate worth considering from a numbers and hard-fact stand point. This attempt at a "correction" (if we'll consider it that) is a simple hot-fix that was on the table long before Homecoming, and is just now being tested-out. In the realm of a Double-Stack, the biggest key issue is the -Dam aspect. The Endurance drain was considerably negligible at best, any other aspect of a crash in that window would've likely been wholly unnoticed, the only one that is a tack in the heel is that window of fallibility when Rage crashes and people blindly attack on doing nothing, or stop completely and twiddle their thumbs. In the current state of the game, this window is correctable with very little effort, and doesn't require any other tampering with the power. In fact, it would be wholly possible to execute this correction on the Living Server right now: Procs. The entirety of purpose on why I'm even testing Tanks is derived from Procs, and currently Tanks are incredibly easy, and vastly capable of flooding their attacks with them to significantly boost their performance. In the case of Super Strength, that window of depression (Crash) when it occurred, I glided over it with nary a care in the world because I was still punching at half-value from trigger procs that aren't impacted by the rage crash because they don't spawn off the AT and its modifier, but their own trigger points as IO's placed in the power with a pre-determined value. I do have to say, I'm a bit baffled by the fact that I can stack nearly 200% +Dam on a Tank right now on one powerset, and still be effectively better on a different one that doesn't even achieve a quarter of that value. Talking SS versus Energy Melee. Both built to similar functionality, both with similar base starting points, both given access to similar values of -Res in their attacks, and yet SS is the one playing catch-up. Now, don't get me wrong, I get it, four minutes with four crashes at each 60/s mark (roughly), so 40/s of buried damage (not voided, still able to drop ~150ish DPS in that window), but even in the reverse of just using one application of Rage and sitting at ~116%, still couldn't come even close and well beyond two minutes in variance between the two. That makes me have to ask what's going on under the hood of SS that it performs that wildly under par when the data points are supposed to be starting from the similar thresholds. Anyway, there's some practical testing to the problem. Frankly, if anyone asks, I think we should be done with the whole of the problem and make Rage a 60/s duration, 240/s recharge with a static crash of -ToHit, -Dam (both reverse values of what it gives each, whaddya think, 10% ToHit and 100% Dam?) and an endurance burn (what, 20? Nah, counterbalance the increase, 35) for 10/s. That takes it down into a realm of recharge that can be made "Perma" with slight effort and just results in a static 10/s window of neither plus or negative. Oh, and give one of the attacks a Bruising effect (specifically this set, as it actually makes thematic sense that someone so effectively strong could easily cause that effect). I'm thinking Haymaker, or just give it back to Jab and fix its base damage, it's barely 60% equivalent to any other T1 at this point.

Ahem Esteemed Testers, I present unto you "Super Strength, and How I Laughed at the Rage Crash." Fun Fact: Damage Procs don't care about the Rage crash debuff. Load up those +Dam Procs folks and watch your SS hopscotch through those Rage Crashes like a true champion. I'll see myself over to the Rage thread. Muwahaha!

Tank Testing Update #3 What's on the docket tonight folks: Energy Melee Super Strength Rage, Rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Ice, Willpower, Bio Armor Stone Melee Leviathan and Soul Mastery Epics Gloom Had a bit of down time recently from illness that took a bit to really recover from, and still finding myself dealing with what's apparently going to be an ongoing issue for the foreseeable get-off-my-lawn future. Given that, I apologize for any unintended delay in really pushing these experiments forward. It's been nearly ten days since my last confessional er, real test update. So lets have a little break down on the things that have happened recently for those not paying full attention to the Test/Beta/Pineapple. Tanks got an overhaul that's looking to be a pretty dramatic thing. Talking raised damage cap, increased modifiers for their Secondary (attack) sets, buffs to support abilities like Maneuvers, Tactics, Assault, and debuff triggers like Melt Armor getting increased collectively. Really taking that next step in bending the "support" side of being a Team Tank. There's also a big shift in Rage, how it functions, and what it means to "crash" with that power. The current attempt from the Dev involved is to create more balance and drive Tanks to be more variant opposition to Brutes as there's very-clearly a heavy divide between how many Brutes exist on Homecoming, versus Tanks (significantly fewer Tanks). Not that Tanks are bad, but there's a lot to be said about how Brutes can manage aggro, and dish out some serious hits while having the same survival range as a Tank, and Tanks can't really compete with that right now. With that being said, all of the preliminary testing being done in this thread is subjective to the fact that (from a Damage perspective), any of it could change at a moments notice. Energy Melee Man this set has some bad blood in the canals of history, but I dropped a video over on the Feedback thread for this last night, and I'll link it here as well, showing some pretty obnoxious things that I was able to do with our current Energy Melee, and it has a lot to do with how vicious Procs are changing Tanks, on top of the damage increase they're receiving. From a survival standpoint, NrgM does pretty well from a damage aspect, but it really lacks significant soft-control options in its current state. Nearly every ability tosses around a low-mag Disorient that's, well, pretty darn useless. Even Whirling Hands doesn't get any real action, so the set is forced to consider alternative choices to get that soft-control ramp-up. Overwhelming Force KD proc is one option, for sure, and also looking into Epics for solutions, but regrettably there's not a lot we can safely rely on that's not going to face a gimp usage, or significant power and slot selection to get to. Currently the only real "hole" I've run into, and not just with NrgM, but with Tankers in general are that, in this scenario where I'm bending procs and not sets/bonuses, getting chains down is difficult, and in some cases there really needs to be an extending tool, range attack, or just something beefier than what's available. Thankfully Gloom is a pretty nice filler, one-off pick from Soul Mastery that easily adds "Umphf" to a build, fills a gap, and adds value. I kind of caught myself wanting to add it repeatedly to a lot of builds because of how simple, proc-capable, and high-damage it was. What it boiled down to is that Energy Melee is currently the strongest tested set on my ticket right now at 2:56 to bury a Pylon. I ran two additional tests for balance at 3:26 and 3:20, with one Hybrid-On test that came in at 2:25. For comparison, Titan Weapons tend to fluctuate in that sub 2:00 category, and Energy Melee just knocked on its door. The biggest component here is Energy Transfer. It has a relatively decent animation time (just under 3/s Arcana), and with Procs, does nearly 1,000 points of damage, potentially more for a Tank buffed further than I stood solo. Bone Smasher also hits pretty hard too (not quite 1,000 of course, but good). What some of these sets lack is a strong ability to pack in -Res effects to leverage Procs more effectively. When I tested NrgM, it was with Bio Armor and went in with 41% global +Dam, a damage aura in Genetic Contamination (also sporting Fury -Res), and whatever -Res I could get from Evolving Armor. For perspective, when I ran SD/RM, Irradiated Ground carried both Heel and Fury -Res, plus a repeated Heel in Radioactive Smash to keep it up more consistently. That build carried 56% global +Dam, and despite all that still clocked in a 3:40 and 3:20 (Hybrid) Bio Armor/Energy Melee/Soul Pylon Run: Ice, Bio, Willpower Shield Defense with Assault (and some meandering bonuses) got me to 56%, Bio Armor dragged in 41%, Willpower (tested tonight) scrapped by with 18.5%, there's a lot of potential variance, especially with the test changes that make having those inherent +Damage global bonuses much stronger right now. Tanks that can leverage the Primary that builds higher values are going to see a lot more force return in combat now, so sets that lack those features like WP or Ice, might seem sluggish by contrast. I only managed to build up 18.5% global on WP because of Hybrid's passive +10, and the modified 18.5% from Assault on Tankers on Pineapple. Tanks that can't get access to a stable form of -Res are also going to "struggle" (for lack of a better term, it's not like we're saying they're dramatically worse, but a realm of DPS potential varying from >250 versus <350). Right now Bio Armor is kind of the only "full package" solution, and as such I think there's going to be a relatively medium-ish window of variance on how any given combo performs based on what additional metrics its bringing to the table (like +Dam). Stone Melee, Ice Armor, and Epics So @Rylas offered, as mentioned previously, to head the legwork on a build or two, so I tossed Ice Armor options over, both testing Stone Melee in two slightly different configurations with two different epics attached: Leviathan and Soul Mastery. Looking over the logs, speeding through a video or two, and talking back and forth about experiences with the set come with some weight on value. Leviathan, with Arctic Breath offering up significant -Res potential (inherent and proc stacks), the investment to get into that ability is one of two attacks, and School of Sharks looked more promising. From a data standpoint, the power executes as it should, but its damage is DoT behind the burst of Proc damage which makes it a very slow-burn attack at that level. From a reasonable-use consideration, Rylas' viewpoint was less favorable towards the ability, which makes that power leap-frog to get Arctic Breath more questionable. A big thing that drove me past a lot of the Epics/Patrons available to Tanks is that most of them sport a couple of mediocre control abilities either in soft sleep, maybe a one-off hold here or there, and an Immobilize for most cases. Many of them are serving a purpose of adding control-utility to Tanks to help with crowd control/management, which leaves most of them somewhat lacking for helping shore-up damage needs for sets that lack either a third or fourth decent ST attack, or some form of additional AoE in the form of a cone/pbaoe/taoe. When they lack in damage, we fix with procs, but the stumbling point is that we have a lot that don't proc-up well (or at all). Right now Leviathan, Soul, Pyre, and Energy Mastery are the best go-to's, but Leviathan is contingent on the probability of sacrificing a power pick to get to Arctic Breath that may not be one you really want to go for. Soul has a great ST in Gloom, and Dark Obliteration is a 1/s, heavy hitting target based AoE that can serve as a pinch-add-in AoE to any build with the slots to support it, and its Proc load. Pyre has Char, and all of the holds in the Epics tend to be very high-burst, fast animating attacks, but the Tanker variants have considerable recharge lengths to keep them from being over-abused. Melt Armor is also in Pyre, and with the buffs to support aspects (Debuffs in this case) of -Res abilities, Melt just became probably the best direct choice over Arctic Breath because it has a higher value (on Test) with a duration considerably longer. My inclusion of Energy into the list is purely for Conserve being a solid all-around end fix for some builds, and Laser Beam Eyes can actually function as a decent ST attack that also grants access to Achilles -Res. Rylas also took the effort to bash in a couple of Pylons and reported back the times they recorded. For Ice/Stone/Leviathan, 5:30-ish. Makes me feel like Arctic Breath isn't doing enough lifting. Survival wise, all thumbs up and really just face an Accuracy concern that I'll need to better address in a few builds, and a concern which the buffed version of Tanker Tactics on test is going to have much more value towards fixing accuracy offsets. I might consider visiting Stone Melee with a different Primary to see if it gives back better/different performance with a bit of +Dam. We know the set has a lot of good Proc consistency/probability because several of its key powers are featured in the Controller epics that were already tested. Gloom I want to say that, for three proc slots and three slots of power-improving enhancements, Gloom might be the 'Hero' of the epics in providing a power that both hits hard, hits fast, and recharges quickly. It fills a lot of attack chains up that are missing that "one last key ability" in their chains while avoiding pesky T1's again. I had to stop myself from wanting to blindly add this ability to everything because of how well it "fixed" builds needing a touch more. SS and Rage Rage got its crash altered so that it's not quite as severe, only applies when double-stacked, and has a relatively significant damage boost under just one application with a bonus of +ToHit blended in. I will say that Super Strength definitely didn't quite feel "Super" by comparison with just one stack involved, and when I tossed the second one on (in a build that had the recharge to actually support a double-stacked Rage) to see what'd happen, I found an interesting surprise. Procs currently don't care about Rage's -99999^ damage reductions that lasts for 10/s. So while Rage may crash, you can keep barreling through your target without a whole ton of concern. The procs themselves are static and separate from AT modifiers. I must admit, I wasn't expecting this case, but the fact that I can still bash KO Blow and get a few hundred in proc damage still with that kind of debuff, that works out really well. If you watch the video for it, and really look at the status window I keep pulled up, there's a significant note in the recharge levels I ran at. I put FF+Rech in both Haymaker and KO Blow and stacked so many proc activations so quickly and often enough that I spent a lot of time at +100% (in this case 251% total) which let me keep KO Blow on a ~5/s cooldown versus 8/s. In the end, even with double-stacked Rage, I walked away from a Pylon at 4:20 (I know, I know) which is kinda comparable to what Stone delivered so far (a little better, but still sitting in that 4:00-5:00 threshold that I expected most Tank builds to end up in). Something I find interesting here, one Rage put me at 98%, double stacked into the late 190's for +Damage, and even with that insane buff, and leveraging Laser Beam Eyes to get -Res stacks going, I still struggled to break the 4:00 barrier (even with Hybrid toggled on for a run). Rage aside, Super Strength is (IMO) definitely a bit under classed in its performance. Not by a lot, but just enough that it kind of lacks some of that punch it really needs to feel "Super" versus just being a boxing set. Willpower/Super Strength Survival and Pylon Test: Edit: Adding the WP/SS build for reference, I'd forgotten to include it as I usually do. As far as a chain for this build, I ran KO Blow > Hay > LBE > Punch > Hay. Once it started rolling the chain somehow starts stacking enough trigger of FF+Rech that it can sit for a ridiculously long time at 251% Rech so long as it keeps cycling the chain (or, at the minimum, just using Haymaker/KOB/Footstomp). And then Ice Armor/Stone Melee/Leviathan: And Ice Armor/Stone Melee/Soul:

Well, honestly, Energy Melee (w/ Procs) isn't nearly as broken as everyone thinks it is, that aside you really want to compare Apples to Apples in this case (Rad to Rad). I only did two runs with SD/RM which isn't a fair enough value to give an average, especially when one of those was using Hybrid. The run that matters--in this case--was 3:40, which isn't far from what you experienced, and there can be some variance when part of the output is reliant on getting -Res procs consistent. I couldn't tell you what is actually in the values for the pseudo-pet that Irradiated casts, but I've gone so far as to only slot 1 End Redux, both -Res procs, and three damage procs and never really seen a negative impact from misses. In many of the Tank tests I've put together, those builds have compensation for accuracy with either Tactics or Kismet on top of a couple of bonuses to get the builds to handle +3/4 anyway. I wouldn't stress trying to compare to Titan Weapons though, that set is kind of a monstrous outlier that really can't be measured against. If you're referring to Bruising, that's been removed from the test server and replaced with a damage modification buff (among other things) for Tanks as a trial.

Show of hands who thought Energy Melee could do something obnoxious? Further testing out the alterations to Tanks with some good-old-fashioned video for any inclined to see the insanity! The SD/RM I posted on 47 had a static +Dam of 56%, this one only has 41%, and has a similar range capability of -Res on a target, but the Rad was more consistent in its applications of the proc(s). Energy Melee doesn't get any of those fancy debuff tools, and Genetic Contamination was the only place I could fit anything of that nature with just one Fury -Res and what Evolving Armor could put out. Watch that and tell me, after these changes to Tanks, that Energy Melee still needs "fixed." Just blasted a 52 EB in 30/s, and a Pylon in 2:25 with the Assault Hybrid turned on, 2:56 as a best time without it. That's beyond what I did with Radiation Melee even with Hybrid. Now I'll just wait here for a Dev to come along, look at this, see something wrong, and tell me there's no way I should be putting out that much damage.

Technically, from a raw standpoint on the power itself, Contaminated Strike actually has a slightly better DPA over Radioactive Smash (54 vs 52), but in practical use, Smash has a higher chance to trigger Contaminated which makes it the better power. The difference between them in a ST scenario is pretty slim, and they can be slotted the same way. What's interesting is that Strike--due to its shorter animation time--would result in a gap in the normal attack chain as is, if I double it up to fill that gap, it reduces DPS even further. Running it with a .5-.7/s gap is safer than over-extending by .4/s. I suspect that Strike over Smash would end up closer to a 4:00 time. I can't honestly see a super-huge reason to try and cram an additional attack into the build just to get a slightly-better performing ST Containment trigger when the build carries Shield Charge (an AoE so good that it can be justified to splash into a ST chain).

Even with the Taunt aspect, I still ran into issues of mobs running away from me and not staying engaged. While it was useful to initially collect, it didn't inherently change the fact that things didn't stay glued to me, so even sets that don't have a taunt (all the other ones), this was still somewhat fair play. In the realm of sets with Damage Auras, that would act just as effectively a threat-modifier for short distance collection. But I did try and maximize what was available to the ability, and adding a little -ToHit gave that much more wiggle room on the elemental aspect of defense. Although what was placed for attacks was still only Smashing anyway wasn't it? So really only reliant on one resistance shield. Maybe there out to be a little variety in the attacks (range, melee, aoe, s/l, elemental) to diversify the need to keep all toggles on beyond "good faith." And to be fair, any character can select the Body Ancillary, so do you consider that a fair-use policy to balance consumption if needed? It still has to play within the realm of the SO system and should be considered in the same way that Hasten must be (somehow). I used it immediately. Claws is a generally fast attack set and my chain was "fine" out of the box with just FU > Strike > Slash > Focus, Hasten was only a caveat to fuel Spin and Shockwave speed. I ran in with it tirggered after the first use of Spin which gave me two full minutes of carnage. When it came to Bosses+, there wasn't really anything different for me to exercise in a ST realm other than dragging them into the next spawn and applying more AoE. Getting Spin faster made it so I didn't have to spend an extra 2/s occasionally tabbing-attacking individual kills. That's what added up over time.

Except for the fact that I explicitly tested the same build both pre and post Tank alterations. In the pre-state I used Contaminated with Bruising, and in the Post state Radioactive Smash. Now in the pre-state Incarnates (primarily looking at Alpha and Interface) had been shut off from instant-access so my time there was 10:30 without those. Post-change, achieving 3:20--even with Incarnates added into the mix--is still a significant deviation. While Bruising definitely imparted benefit to the Procs themselves, changes to the base modifier while using things like AAO and Assault (especially now) are going to easily eclipse that loss. I'll get there eventually, don't worry. I think you'll be surprised what it can still do.