Galaxy Brain

This would be due to the Purple Patch, which alters the stats of powers depending on how much higher or lower level you are relative to your target. I was targeting something equal level to me, so there were no special modifiers for the Nueronic 71.74 damage proc. The following would apply for each level higher the target is than me: +0: 1.0 mod = 71.74 dam +1: 0.9 mod * 71.74 = 64.57 dam +2: 0.8 mod = 57.39 dam +3: 0.65 mod = 46.63 dam (as seen in your tests!) +4: 0.48 mod = 34.44 dam Same applies to the ~107.09 damage from the superior procs. At +3, they get modified by 0.65 = 69.61 (rounded up)

I provided the combat log in the post as well as showed how you got your numbers 🙂 You are fighting a boss that is +3 to you, yes?

To be fair, the set is also getting buffs to Slug, Sniper Rifle, Flamethrower, and Full Auto in exchange.

Can you cite a source foe that? Because I pulled those numbers from in game logs, you can also check on CoD. To back up my claim, here are the direct logs from Live: 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You hit Super-Heavy Bag with your Suppressive Fire for 3.46 points of Lethal damage. 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You hit Super-Heavy Bag with your Suppressive Fire for 3.46 points of Lethal damage. 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You Stun Super-Heavy Bag with your Suppressive Fire. 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You hit Super-Heavy Bag with your Superior Blaster's Wrath: Recharge/Chance for Fire Damage for 107.08 points of Fire damage. 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You hit Super-Heavy Bag with your Apocalypse: Chance for Negative Energy Damage for 107.08 points of Negative Energy damage. 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You hit Super-Heavy Bag with your Unbreakable Constraint: Chance for Smashing Damage for 107.08 points of Smashing damage. 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You hit Super-Heavy Bag with your Neuronic Shutdown: Chance for Psionic Damage for 71.74 points of Psionic damage. 2023-04-11 00:10:19 You hit Super-Heavy Bag with your Ghost Widow's Embrace: Chance for Psionic Damage for 71.74 points of Psionic damage. As well as CoD links and screenshots: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.attuned_ghost_widows_embrace_f.attuned_ghost_widows_embrace_f&at=blaster https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.crafted_apocalypse_f.crafted_apocalypse_f&at=blaster If you are referring to the purple patch, the damage of them would become ~51.4 for the Purple IOs, and ~34.44 for normal Procs vs +4 at lvl 50. If you are referring to +3 via Incarnate level shift, it'd look closer to your claim with 69.6 dam on the big procs, and 46.63 on the normal ones as seen below. Just multiply the damage of them by the values seen in the table below: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Purple_Patch The wiki also has the Procs Per Minute formula I used prior to do the "theorycraft" version of the test: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Procs_Per_Minute I did not test that, but it should be something like 36.1% - 15.8% chances between live and brainstorm which is not too reliable due to it's 1 PPM proc rate: Using that formula above, you get: 1 * ((1.67+20) / 60) -> 1 * (21.67 / 60 ) -> 1 * 0.36117 = 36.117% 1 * ((1.5+8) / 60) -> 1 * (9.5/ 60 ) -> 1 * 0.15833 = 15.833% EDIT: Upon a re-test, I got the following results with 20 shots vs my training dummy: Live: 10 / 20 = 50% Brainstorm: 2 / 20 = 10% In this case, yeah it was a major blow to that particular proc, yet the damage dealt by Suppressive Fire should even that out. On live, you are hitting for ~6 damage without other enhancement. On brainstorm, it hits for ~102 damage, an increase of +96. With enhancement on the power, you're looking at 200.07 damage which is a MASSIVE increase available every 8 seconds, while not the same it does shore up a lot of the offense lost at least vs in ST by the proc rates.

Doing some quick testing on a DP/ Blaster with the procs mentioned prior between Live/Beta, I got the following results from 20 hits each on my training dummy. The Total is the total damage dealt, AVG number is the total damage / 20 shots, the % is the % of the total damage, Hits and Proc % show how often an effect went off: In this sample of only 20 shots, the damage dealt by the Live version is about 17.22% more than the current Brainstorm patch. Looking at the proc rate, this could be due to Neuronic randomly not proccing as often as the others... if we game the system a little bit, we can see what it looks like if Neuronic procced just 6 times like Ghost widow did: This adds 215.22 total damage, and makes Live only 13.5% better damage. This is without any added enhancement, but what I forgot was the Blaster ATO does enhance recharge, but with it's super high PPM I figured it'd be good to test it out. This could be why Neuronic got some worse rolls on the Brainstorm set of 20. A further test with more shots (100 lets say) would show better averages. Speaking of damage and enhancement, lets take a look at these values if we just straight up replaced Neuronic with an Acc/End enhancement: With 5 procs, the big difference between the two is highlighted as the advantage of live drops to 5.4%. On Brainstorm, the majority of damage is always coming from Suppressive Fire itself. This is where stuff like Defiance, Assault, or just Damage Enhancement comes into play. Interestingly, the changes between Live and Brainstorm did alter Defiance where I had a higher average with Live than Brainstorm by a few %! Lets recalc these though as if we slotted a Thunderstrike Acc/Dam instead of an Acc/End though, giving the power a 26.5% damage boost: With a non-SO level of damage enhancement + Defiance, adding up to 49.5% on Live and 47.5% on Brainstorm (Avg), Brainstorm managed to out-do Live this time by about 2%. With an SO level / Superior Blaster Acc/Dam, the difference grows close to 4%: And with an Apocalypse +Damage, it swings to a clean 9.75% in favor of Brainstorm. If I replace the next worst proc (Ghost Widow) with an Apocalypse Dam/End for even more +Dam the difference skyrockets to nearly 25% in favor of Brainstorm: In fairness though, lets compare the original Live proc-bomb version to the one with 2 slots dedicated to damage: Basically equal! It also cannot be understated the damage percent that you get out of each version when you *DON'T* proc. On Brainstorm, if you do not proc anything you are still doing 40-56% of the potential damage, while on live you are looking at 2-5%ish at best which could lead to critical fails of a sort as seen where there were a few times I didn't proc. What this sample + math shows to me, is that on average the new Supressive Fire affords more slotting flexibility compared to before where Damage sets could be used to good effect while still being able to toss in procs. The much bigger damage allows for outside buffs to greatly influence the power, as does the boosted recharge allow you to toss this near-equal damage out way way faster. I do not see the issue on the proc/damage side *specifically*.

I can certainly do a test later when home from work, but as a Video Game the math should mirror what was posted above roughly over time. If you want to do the same test alongside me and post results that'd be awesome! Don't even need to take down a boss specifically, just a RWZ dummy and tracking the damage over say... 20 shots and see what the averages are.

This is based on math of how the game works + numbers right from CoD. Its x16 damage from the 6.26 on live to the 102.6 it does now before procs/enhancement. That doesn't need testing, and thanks to math the above should be relatively the same in game if you try it. As mentioned by Booper tho, this is derailing yet all the math shows it to be a wash.

Howdy all, I was curious about the changes to procs and Supressive Fire myself and decided to do some math to figure out if this was actually a nerf. On the one hand, the activation and recharge going down really hurts the proc rates... but when it comes to damage, it is doing over 16x more than before which @ScarySai mentioned could make everything wash out. Lets find out! 1) Proc Rates Going off ye olde PPM formula for a single target click - [ PPM * ((activation + rech) / (60)) ], a standard 3.5 PPM proc should wash out to the following: Old: 1.67 | 20 = 90% New: 1.5 | 8 = 55.4% Not the best... but lets look at it in context. Ghost Widow is a good standard of a 3.5 ppm proc that Supressive can take, dealing 71.75 damage at lvl 50 when it goes off. Assuming that over time it fires equal to the proc rate, the average damage should look like: Old: 90% = 64.58 dam avg New: 55.4% = 39.76 dam avg Again, not looking good for the new version in terms of damage... until we add the actual damage the power does: Old: 6.26 dam + 64.58 = 70.84 dam avg New: 102.6 dam + 39.76 = 142.36 dam avg So with no added dam enhancement and 1 proc, the average damage is a little over double than what it would have been on the old version! Being able to hit for over double the damage on avg with less than half the recharge time sounds like a good deal on paper. 2) Proc Bombing & Damage Lets kick it up a notch and say this is a Blaster with some money, slapping in the following procs with their average damage per ppm listed: Apocalypse (96.38 old, 76.3 new) Superior Blasters Wrath (96.38 old, 84.78 new) Unbreakable Restraint (96.38 old, 76.3 new) Ghost Widows Embrace (64.58 old, 39.76 new) Gladiators Net (64.58 old, 39.76 new) Neuronic Shutdown (64.58 old, 39.76 new) These 6 would IIRC be the best damage procs to load out if going for pure proc damage, lets see how they compare: Old: 6.26 + 482.87 = 489.13 New: 102.6 + 356.67 = 459.27 The new version with 6 procs deals about 6.5% less damage on average, which is without any damage bonuses whatsoever. Lets assume there is a Tanker on the team running assault for 15% more damage: Old: 7.19 + 482.87 = 490.07 New: 117.99 + 356.67 = 474.66, ~3.2% less At that point its basically negligable, like if on the blaster you also fired a few powers beforehand and have another 25% dam from Defiance along with the Tanker: Old: 491.63 New: 500.31, ~1.8% more! Now, lets look if the power only had 5 procs as well as the 15 - 40% damage boost from the outside, assuming there is an Acc/End in the 6th slot (dropping one of the 3.5 ppms): Old: 424.55 | 425.49 | 427.05 New: 419.51 | 434.9 | 460.55 So even when procced to the max, outside DAM buffs + how fast it recharges seems to not only make it a wash, but potentially a BUFF to damage on average. Not to mention if all the procs go off when you fire the new one it just deal far more damage anyways...

Awesome job noting these results! However, it is a bit messy to parse through given each test had a different build, and was against different targets (let alone different ammos). From the changes, it looks like each ammo has a slightly different stun or hold duration, and for Normal Ammo specifically it applies a Stun not a Hold, which could skew results when comparing say, Di Di Guns to Two Gun Trixie where one had lethal + stun and the other cold + hold. Do you think you would be able to try one ammo per character, and attack the same specific enemy between Live and Beta to get a 1:1 comparison? Side note on AR, it may be worthwhile to see in-context the ST damage change by folks with Ignite + however they keep a boss still VS Incinerator without need of extra steps 🤔 Both versions cast in 2s, but Ignite takes 10s to apply full damage where Incinerator takes about half the time + does not need an additional 2-4 seconds of prep time to keep a target still.

Detach aesthetics from powers, to a degree. Turn something like Fire Blast into "Deterioration Blast". The base look could be fiery, but you can also alter the look to be Icy, Corrosive, all of that come from a weapon, and so on. The mechanical theme of "my special effect is DoT" would be the unifier as opposed to say "Forceful Blast" which would be the Energy Analogue where your special is pushing targets. Expand powersets beyond 9 powers, and include more passives / A or B choices. Coupled with the above, a "Single Weapon" set would cover nearly half the melee sets in CoH as a weapons master type character. Better yet, it may not need specific weapon sets at all if it were just a costume choice for your powers. This frees up a lot of design space to make much bigger power pools based on mechanics that you layer aesthetics with to get even finer creative control. Similar enhancement system, but expanded upon. Add in more slots like a global slot, a slot for a whole powerset, maybe special slots per power that take special procs. Additionally, IOs and normie enhancements become one in the same with more complex enhancements able to just drop. More interaction with the world based on powers. Your character is super strong? They can kool aid through a door. They have electrical power? They can turn on a generator or zap a body of water. Lots of ways to play with this.

Tbf, this is a content problem more than a player/power problem. The way the game is structured favors AoE over anything else.

@Zeraphia, the tests did leave secondaries out of the picture by relying on Willpower (no offensive benefit) or just the sustain + build up on blasters. The mileage will definitely vary depending on the combo, but this vaccuum test shows the impact between KB and KD rather well I think.

The screenshots here (at the bottom cus mobile) may be a bit out of date, but I have had recordings of certain sets both with and without KB to KD. For context, these were data sets taken from running my "Mission Sim" AE map to try and isolate primary performance for Scrappers and Blasters. Both were done on SO builds with basic slotting per power (3dam, 1acc/end/rech, etc), with the exception being when I re-ran with KD I also included +Lvl damage IOs to emulate the same exact stats (generally a +3 IO would make up for the loss of a 3rd SO when combined with a lvl 50 SO). Scrapper results below were the averages of 10 runs per set / set variant at 0/3 difficulty. Blasters were the same but at 0/8 in the screenshots. Of note, for Scrappers I saw Claws and KM speed up by about 11% overall at low difficulty with the only change being Shockwave/Repulsing Torrent knocking down instead of back. This was in an office map without huge target saturation and it still saw a notable average performance increase, even with knocking enemies into corners/etc for best effect. On the blaster side we see more differences. Energy blast improved by 13%, Archery and Dark by 10%, old sonic by 11%, and AR by 14%. All shaved off nearly a full minute with sometimes minimal slot investment (Archery, Dark, Sonic all needed just 1). Again, this was in an office map with plenty of walls, corners, doorways, cubicles, stairs, etc to abuse KB with. But between 20 runs total for each of the sets (10 with, 10 without), the KD was always faster to clear. To me, this shows that KD seems to have more value than KB all other things being equal. A better analogy between the two may be something like an IO that turns a Slow into an Immobilize, or a Stun into a Hold. Both pairs do basically the same thing (limit movement, limit actions), but the method of doing so is better on one side than the other where they get rid of a "downside". Funny enough, all three examples have the downside of the targets moving about either forcefully or slowly via -Speed/Drunk Walk when stunned. What makes KB controversial is that it is too easy to "troll" with it compared to nearly everything else either intentionally or not. We have all seen or likely been that player who picks up Storm and uses Gale every chance they get. In a team, talking to the person spamming it either leads to them getting better with KB (push them to the wall/corner/towards the tank!), or getting kicked for not coordinating with their team the same as somebody running off and trying to solo away from the group each chance they get and screaming at the team about it. Its not a matter of KB itself but how it is piloted, just like other "troll" tactics. Combine that with how easy it is to misuse and the detrimental effects it can have to the multitude of area specific powers and you have a recipe for frustration from how another player using their powers effects how you play. That said, the measurable benefit of KD vs KB means I am in the camp that such options should have some form of drawback. It does not need to be harsh, as demonstrated with how I was able to get the same stats on the powers with an IO, but still something that players need to work with. If anything, KB should be buffed to have some sort of benefit to not only compete with KD/KU in the meta sense (making it more of a choice) but to also fit the theme. When superheroes get tossed 100ft across the room they definitely seem to be hurt more than if they were just knocked on their butts after all 😉

I wanted to dig a little deeper on this, so I looked into how the pool powers perform on a Defender in terms of rounding out attacks: The above are all the pool attacks that dont need to be unlocked, except for cross punch for comparison. Brawl is also included as fighting pool adds to it, as are t1/t2 from elec and seismic. All values are unenhanced, and taken from CoD. Sorted by DPA as seen above, Arcane Bolt takes the cake when boosted, but even without Arcane Power it is above the rest except for Toxic Dart which trades secondary effects for raw output it seems, making it almost comprable to a T1/2 blast on the AT. After that, even on a ranged AT we see that Boxing and Cross punch offer more bang for your buck than the other non-origin pool attacks even without synergy bonuses. Boxing + Kick specifically get some nice goodies where Boxing gets a 35% chance of Mag 3 stun on a power with around a 1s animation and 2.5s base recharge which can stack to lock down even bosses briefly with itself or other stun powers. Kick likewise goes from 15% to 40% chance to knock back, though even with the synergies it is worse dpa than all but Brawl and Flurry. The other pool attacks are different shades of "meh" comparatively with Flurry being awful. Of note, Air Superiority is the only one of the bunch to have a 100% chance of Knock which makes it a stand out utility tool even with "meh" DPA. Jump Kick has the same Damage, Activation, and even recharges in 2.8s vs 4 for AS (costs a little less end to boot), but it instead has a 20% chance to inflict mag 4.15 knock up compared to 100% chance to inflict mag 0.8 knockup on AS. This roughly evens out over time, but for the effect I think we'd all rather it be consistent. So what does this all mean? In my opinion, powers should all be fun to use as well as "worth" their slot. Comparing the available picks together we have some clear winners in terms of added damage potential and utilities, as well as ones that are clearly... not as good. For fighting pool specifically, it seems that Boxing + Cross has a clear edge on Kick + Cross with Boxing just being better than kick as an attack. The weirdness comes from needing boxing + kick to unlock the synergies for both, where either Box or Kick being owned improves Cross Punch in the same way. Kick is a fun power, but Air Superiority is better as a control AND damage option even with all 3 fighting powers boosting Kick up. That is where it becomes kind of iffy where its a mule that has to be taken to make the other powers better moreso than being great on its own.

This tbh. The root issue to me is that often the "good stuff" is locked behind powers that are more or less an obstacle to get "the good" rather than being solid choices in their own right. Best example being boxing + kick, where taking both does give you an awesome cross punch but there is little reason to use them over it.

As others have noted, in general it is true as 90% res and 45% def will mitigate 90% of incoming damage. The big caveats tho are how they go about this. A res based character will be taking more hits, and thus more secondary effects, then a def based one. However, the def based one rolls the dice per attack and has a higher risk/reward. Ideally you want a mix of both 🙂

This is misleading, iirc all (blaster specifically) T1s should be 1s, and T2s 1.67s. Whats weird is that some sets (melee ones too) have swapped positions for the T1 / T2 so the fast one is sometimes the t2 and the slower one t1. You can pick either at character creation so its a bit of a toss up. Picture below (on mobile) shows the same CoD data but for t1 and t2. Its weird how some are faster than the norm tho.

Exactly, the 123% global recharge is the minimum to get it to return in just under 90s. If you are off by even 1 server tick, you will start back at square one. Building for way more recharge is basically insurance vs slows/etc, as well as better end return. @Rudra, there could be times where it has lapsed and it wasnt clicked in time. I know I have done it where I could be mid animation for something and it drops. Side note, are your SS characters brutes?

This came up a while back and the issue is definitely permadom and the weirdness around it. First, its not actually too hard to acheive perma dom. You need 123% global recharge (which makes my brain happy), which can be acheived a variety of ways. Having hasten active already gives you 70%, so you only need 53% from IO's/etc. Hasten doesnt need to be perma either as long as you can average that 123% while Dom is on cooldown. With 3 so's in hasten, it should give enough average recharge to let domination have about 65% uptime with no added recharge bonuses... but it doesnt. Domination isnt just about recharge, but also having enough meter to click the button in the first place. When Dom ends, your meter depletes and you need to spend X time to fill it back up to dominate again. Similar powers do not have this caveat, allowing a scaling progression to perma where you really do have a consistent X% uptime. Domination does not have this, its either perma or some nebulous amount of "up" depending on your targets. Hitting perma status lets you basically ignore the meter entirely until you mess up, totally changing your character and AT as a whole. Domination provides a full endurance refresh, full mez protection, and super-mez for you to inflict. The endurance return is gravy, but the real meat and potatoes is how you no longer worry about incoming mez and the ability to lock down mobs entirely. Having that for every fight is awesome, but unlike nearly every other long term boost you rely on meter which prevents you from having "near perma" status in any real capacity. Going perma allows you to skip half the requirements to actually using the power, and the relatively low requirement to get there swings it from a niche build to the standard. Especially when you objectively compare doms in and out of domination. Objectively speaking, there's no reason you wouldn't want to permadom outside of not having the resources to do so. You *do not have to* make a permadom, but thats like making a Super Strength character and not taking rage. Note that I didnt compare it to perma/double rage, its more like comparing Super Strength without it (non perma) to with it on (rage is more or less perma out of the box). Sure, you are not forced to take rage but holy moly are you better with it to the point of it being a no-brainer to grab / its *the* reason to take Super Strength. To me, having to plan a build in order to get permadom is fine. The gap between getting there and actually having it is not. Anything that changes with Doms should be addressing that gulf imo.

I've been there! Looking between two things then realizing like... halfway that one was a bit off lol. I think this convo still had merit as we didn't talk about the AoE performance between the two, something @Ston has looked at in their round of testing between Tank/Brute/Scrap with identical builds.

Lets do some quick comparisons, using Mids as @Rudra was doing. If we compare Beheader for both Brute and Tanker we see the following for base damage: Brute = 41.71 Tank = 50.19 ( ~20% better base value) Lets slap some lvl 50 IO's for damage into each: Brute = 83.03 Tank = 99.91 (still ~20% better) Things change real fast tho when you introduce fury: 83.03 (0%) / 103.9 (25%) / 124.7 (50%) / 145.6 (75%) / 166.4 (100%) At max fury, without added damage buffs, the Brute will deal about 40% more damage per hit than the Tank. At around 75% Fury, it still deals over 30% more and that figure seems rather reasonable to maintain. Lets compare the same power again, but damage cap the two AT's. Brute = 250.26 (~25% better) [41.71 * 6] Tank = 200.76 [50.19 * 4] At their caps, Tankers lose out on ~25% damage per hit compared to their Brute counterparts. While Brutes start off worse, it only takes about 20-25% fury to match Tanker damage with normal enhancements and from there they still maintain a raw offensive edge (AoE stuff excluded), and at the highest end they still out damage Tankers assuming both are capped. Speaking of ease to get to said caps, lets look at the enhancement + damage bonus values between the two powers. Brute = 99.08% from Enhancement + ~202.17% from max fury = 301.25% / 600%, a little over halfway there with no outside bonuses! Tank = 99.08% from Enhancement = 99.08% / 400%, a little under a quarter of the cap. On paper, the Brutes should not only be dealing more damage on average, but it's actually easier to get them to their caps than Tankers. On the defense side, they have the same defensive caps but there is a difference in their Res/Def values and their HP/Max HP. We can compare Hardened Carapace for this: Brute = 29.71% (18.75%) Tank = 39.62% (25%) about ~33% better Comparing HP stats: Brute = 1499 / 3212.69 Tank = 1874 / 3534 (~25% to 10% better at cap) Tanks edge out in initial defenses, but when you have everything capped out the HP difference either mirrors the offense difference or is even smaller.

The OP of that thread has a link to the Scrapper thread, which goes into more details (on mobile atm so links are weird). AVG refers to the Average time, Swing is the time difference between the set's average and the overall average (for example, you could "swing" 50s slower or faster than the average). If youd like, the mission used is available on both live and Beta to try out in any settings youd like to compare AR to Ice. I have run both sets about 40 times each now between SOs, IOs, and different map/enemy configs and that experience has been pretty insightful! If not that map, comparing the two in any way youd like I think would be a great exercise and would bring more data to the table to show whete each set's strengths lie.

The linked thread shows that I did not use end game builds, relying on only SOs and even then only the primary blast set. x8 emulates being on a team where youd have a ton of targets. If you are lvl 35 and on a full team, the x8 tests I did would emulate (on avg) the impact that set has on a team where the faster avg clear times tend to have better performance in a crowd. Im not saying that AR is garbage, it can work great! However when compared to other blast sets it has shortcomings where it should have perks.

The latter part is demonstratedly false by looking at records with ice blast vs a lot of other sets. Historically, Ice has also been up there with Fire in terms of overall power level even on live. You're right in that absolutes are usually wrong, but in this case I am referring to how there is a lot of evidence saying that ice > ar for blasters. On the AoE side, AR likely pulls ahead with Force Feedback in play but in my own testing Ice was able to consistently clear x8 maps about 13s faster than AR specifically. (Source below, slightly outdated but there have not been significant changes to AR or Ice since this post that I recall)

This also describes energy blast + devices, aside from -Def. Also describes Ice Blast with its mixed damage types, ability to picl out individuals, and the slows keep foes at bay. I dont think anyone will say AR > Ice Blast. Yes, you can make any set in the game work and be functional. However that doesnt mean a particular set is "good" in comparison to other sets in it's pool.