Galaxy Brain

Gold Jackal, my Elec/Bio gimmick sentinel 😄

Even with perfect accuracy you always have a 5% miss chance. I just think it'd be nice if the power activates you dont drop the next bit of the combo.

Damn straight. Also yes, the game will never be balanced, or at least 100% balanced nor should it be. That said it should definitely be smoothed out more!!! There will always be a best/worst everything, but as long as the gap between isn't astronomical or one set invalidates another then all should be good.

I guess it depends though, what instances does Tank Survivability shine? At this point could it be said they are roughly equal but divided by player preference/style?

I 100% agree that the more affordable market is a positive thing for the game! At the same time though, the game was clearly not intended to have the portion of people with these tools that we have today for much the same reasons you mention here. On live, for every decked out character there were likely 1000 that were "basic", on HC it feels closer to 1:10. The balance that came from the scarcity + effort of attaining these things is out the window and we're in a much different (not worse, different) environment today. If you use dropped recipes to craft / converters than yes it can be even cheaper! But just looking at the gainz per casual missions + "buy it now" prices, it shows the barrier to entry on IO's is very small if you choose to dive in.

Beam Rifle is super good on Sents!

Indeed, which is a huge factor in why I wanted to bring up the thread too starting with the market. Like... what is the most expensive Enh atm.... Some of the most common are only between 3-5mill The best IO's range between ~10 and ~20mill a pop, with the tippity top ones seemingly all at around 20m. Running a random PI radio mission on my lvl 50 at merely 0/5, I gained: +445,526 raw Inf 7 rando salvage I sold for 1 each, making a profit of 2,285 attained 1 SO that I sold at a store for 15,600 attained 5 generic recipes that I sold at a store for 516,650 Adding it all up, a rather casual (even at x5) level 50 mission garnered $980,061. I would wager even just cranking it up to x8 would net double that per mission on average even at +0. Actually, having wiped that let me see what a random 8 man mission gets me... +1,156,237 raw inf, but I only got 1 drop (rando yellow IO) with I sold on the AH for a profit of 23,117, totaling $1,179,354. Running another with the team of about the same size mission netted $1,067,377. I got rather unlucky with drops, but that first one showed that even a handful of dropped loot can easily net another half a mill casually! ...Actually, lets try solo again but at 0/8: Inf: 785,505 Enh: 0 Gen Recipes: 892,675 (seriously, just sell these at stores.... they add up mad fast) Salvage: 955 Set Recipes: 19,812 Total: $1,698,947 Lets say you are just randomly running a few radios a night, say 5. If each one nets you around 1.5 mil each including just selling rando stuff you get, that is 7.5m a night if that's all you do. If you play 3 nights, that is 22.5 mil, which is enough to bid on the most expensive IO's on the market. That is *nutso* compared to live!!! With this kind of "casual" income, you could reliably buy up basically any IO you want just by playing around at high level. I didn't even bother to do a whole TF or anything to see what that'd be like.... but this is something to chew on in terms of availability.

On Brainstorm, the mission isn't really that "Brutal" but should be more dangerous at least with a new enemy group (I used them for testing the damage spread in-game). Also includes 2 more boss fights. If it is still too easy to survive to where both Brute and Tank have 0 threat, I can add in some cheats for the enemies.

to a degree I think it is the principle of the matter + how certain sets don't get to join in. "Oh, elec control can proc the hell out of jolting chain and do nutty stuff!" vs "Oh.... ice control is uh... cool" "Man, I can proc the hell out of Infrigidate, and then my blast set can proc FF to keep the cycle on that + my debuffs strong" vs "Uhhhh, I can slot panacea in my empathy powers!"

@Bill Z Bubba, @Infinitum So, I can tweak the mission sim to be a bit more.... Bruteish if need be. Criteria: Enemies need to have a bit more bite to them to showcase raw durability as a factor when we are not trying to just isolate the attack set (as done with other runs) Enemies need to have more powerful ST targets to chew on offensively whether that be an added EB / boss fights / just make em a scootch tougher with armor powers on the whole for science?

the other part here is that aside from infenal cus Axe, it's almost the same as a fire farm 😛

Doesnt this further imply Acro needs love if IO's tek its jerb?

Soloing a TF may actually be on the Money since the string of missions usually hit all the standard tropes you see in rando story arcs/etc, but it gets tricky when it comes to the odd X factors in TFs like travel time, hunts, special objectives, etc. A mission that *emulates* all the stuff in a TF you'd regularly judge on would be better.

But, chasing stuff down / maneuvering through different spots is much much much much much more common than fighting an AV no? This all depends on what the actual question you wanted answered is, if it is "General Gameplay" then yeah.... AV-Beatdown only with nothing else would not reflect that. Which is where the AE can come in by allowing for varied X factors to play in a repeatable manner. The mission sim has an elite boss room along with two guaranteed bosses you need to hunt down which are meant to test ST, the general mobbing is meant to test AoE, and the enemies are just dangerous enough to where they can get licks in or even cause defeats if you do not pay attention can test mitigation, though it's origins as an offense test skews that side a bit. If you were to say, pit an EM/Somethin designed to nuke Single targets up against a strictly AoE or Tanking test then yeah, it'd be a bad time. Likewise a farmer vs an AV. But neither of those specialized tests reflect the "average" gameplay in CoH (hopping mission to mission) unless you are building for very specific content anyways. So it begs the question of what exactly we are testing for?

Yes and no. What spreadsheets do not show is the X factors like Knockdown, slows, -ToHit, -Def, etc, over time and how they really contribute to a set's performance both in Offense and Defense. Yes, if I made builds with X% recharge and Y% defense you would likely see different results to the point of being able to just spreadsheet but then that also eliminates all the other X factors from the sets in question. That leads to the "No" in that adding in more powers or bonuses ends up taking away from a lot of the sets despite adding "raw power". Building to the test likewise cuts a lot out as you mentioned with a fire farmer not being good in normal gameplay. There are a few questions that can be answered by that testing, but likewise is the point of the thread overall "Why make a brute in general?" or "Should I make a Brute for this very specific task?". If the latter, then it gets even more specific to the point of just asking what the best X is, why make a Brute, Tanker, or Scrapper if a Fire/Kin controller does the task the best anyways? (Just random example there). If the former for just "in general, does X or Y live up to their tradeoffs?" then these kind of tests have more merit since we also kind of know that IO's/Incarnates homogenize things a bit anyways.

Pretty much! I would avoid "building for the test" as much as possible and just shooting for a "run of the mill, makes my character better" build.

I'd say shoot for like a "decent" IO build without incarnates. So, include all the staples: The suite of globals we all go for (Numina, Miracle, Perf, LotG's, Gladiator Armor, etc) Procs and -Res where applicable Set bonuses to give some boosts But, no Purples/Winters I am on the fence with ATO's as they do rather different things for both AT's and TBH I think the Tank ones (at least the procs) are just flat out better than the Brute ones so it seems kind of biased there?

Maybe we can come up with a few powerset combos that are more neutral for each that would give a more accurate representation? Katana/Willpower Spines/Fire (lets actually see which is better) Street Justice/Rad Titan Weapons/Ice Stone/Elec These should be a healthy mix I think

Another thing that is quirky is that sets with consistent +Damage favor tanks. Follow Up, Power Siphon, Rage, Against All Odds, etc, have a higher base value for Tankers and allow them to do consistently good damage while a Brute has a bit of fluctuation with Fury + lower damage mods on those powers.

You would get all the procs. The PPM system as described gives a % chance based on the "local" cycle time per minute, ignoring any global bonuses. This is why for example, my En/Time blaster with force feedbacks out the wazoo can maintain 300% global recharge at all times and get PPMs of like... 12 due to tripling the PPM in each power through "outside" recharge. The base idea of it is nice as beforehand the raw % chance favored powers with very fast cycle times to roll dice as much as possible, whereas now it favors low cycle times which is actually refreshing given most all games have the best strat using fast powers. However, as Oedipus mentioned it is also easy to "game" that system by having a power that can reach 75~90% proc chance on a short timer due to global recharge. Whether this is good or bad is up in the air as it does have a fun niche build to chasing that, but the side effect is that global recharge tends to make everything better on top of the big proc powers.

Its much different on sentinels as its Single Target weakness has been 100% flipped around! It has a t3 blast with a 1s cast time, and a to blast+mez in Tesla Cage, as well as a quickly charging nuke that drains end hard. Its much more "efficient" on sentinels I'd say. On other ATs though, the set has an identity crisis where due to its design it is really only good when paired with something that helps it sap endurance (power boost, power sink, transference, etc) in order to do kts shtik. It has OK aoe, but very poor ST in practice and when you compare its utility outside specific synergies to maximize drain it falls behind other utility blast sets. Sentinels bypass that by giving you lightning bolts instead of electrical bolts lol.

It does do that with attack vitals, and DB stalkers go ham on DPS! As for the suggestion, I think that combos shouldn't end on miss as long as you "perform" the motions. If you miss the last bit sure, but starting over from square one just ain't fun!

@Luminara, I'm not talking about people having the same milk. Rad can have chocolate milk and TA can have strawberry, different milk but they both get something special. Im talking more about how due to secondary effects, the slotting options just in general are not equitable. A set that can really only slot for stuns is stuck with crappy stun IOs for example. Either allow it more options or, or better AND, make the stun IOs not bad compared to other IOs in their own unique way. Perfect example is the introduction of Power Transfer and Dam/End Mod IOs. Suddenly, a whole suite of powers have a cool slotting option they did not have before that is also nota copy/paste of other sets. I want more of that. The synapse set is another example directly to your movement speed idea. More builds like that SHOULD be viable! Add in more options for the set bonuses that are sort of neglected, recognizing that rech and def are really strong so other stats should offer as much relatively.

Theres a few things: 1) Balance IOs against each other / balance sets to where they get equitable opportunities There are a number of IO sets that are simply bad to sub par that can be easily skipped in HC, and a number of "must have" IOs to boot. Not to mention certain bonuses just being way better than others (recovery, damage, etc vs rech/def). There is also a spread of IO types that just get way better IOs, like compare -Def to Stun for example. Then there are game-changer IOs like the -Res procs, Knockdown, Force Feedback, etc that only certain families of IOs have access to. Imagine if stun or fear got similar game changers? Circling back to stats, I think that defense and recharge are incredibly powerful stats so its natural to chase those. That and most sets give you decent blocks of those stats + plenty of uniques grant them too! Where is the unique that grants +20% damage tho? What if certain "low tier" sets got revamped to where the final bonus was a lot of damage, or recovery, etc? What if +dam from IO bonuses affect proc damage? I think by naturally making other stats and uniques competitive with the current top dogs it will naturally increase diversity and viable builds. 2) Past a certain point, not even needing a billion dollar build, IOs do let you far exceed enemies through raw stats. Partly due to the rech/def stats, but overall even a middle of the road IO build will often let you dunk on CoH content. This is due to most battles just being "who has better stats?" to win, with very few alternate win conditions. There are no enemies that are more beneficial to crowd control primarily over straight defeat, or enemies which have tons of accuracy but otherwise are not super dangerous alone but can open you up and thus need to be targeted first, enemies that mitigate AoEs, enemies that resist or are immune to taunt, etc. Things that break up combat and allow other strategies to shine (THEY WONT BE THE ONLY STRATEGY, RAW DAMAGE CAN WORK STILL BUT MAYBE NOT BE THE "BEST" METHOD) will naturally rebalance the game where certain abilities are suddenly more valuable where they aren't today. These combined should help increase build diversity in a positive manner by buffing sets through content / options. Imagine a new "phase" IO group that suddenly gives options to several sets with phase or cage powers, they may go from annoyance/lower tier powers to highlights. Edit: Rularuu eyeballs fit the bill of the accurate enemies but they are super special in how you encounter them. Im more talking about how several groups have a "sniper" class that could be proliferated.

While this is true that now two sets will have the *SAME* slotting options, having similar opportunities per set would be very nice overall.