Galaxy Brain

Tbh, the way the game is set up I don't understand the idea for having an ST specialist...? Most attack sets when used by dps ATs have great ST rotations as is. There are of course specialists like Stalkers (across the board) and sets elsewhere with heavy ST hitters in the mix that dont heavily lose out on AoE in return. Of course the opposite is true with sets that have more AoE than ST (spines) but even they arent shabby at ST. When it comes to ST damage in a meta sense, it is great for the huge targets in the game like AVs and such... but then that's a niche part of the game as is and they get wrecked by debuffs more than dps. This is all my personal opinion but I feel that a set with by design poor AoE and nothing to make up for it (like Dark Melees amazing secondary effects and drains) is destined to be kinda meh 😞

I'd love PvP that is indirect. Instead of direct combat, you have different sides compete in objectives. That and the base idea of like a SF where the goal is to break all the things would just be fun 🙂

Correct, which is what I'm going for as well 🙂 We have enough animations for unarmed and armed attacks that I'm sure could be used

I'm sure this has been brought up, but the ability to have all fire sword variants of fire melee attacks, or all non fire sword (same with Ice Sword, Stone Mallet, etc) would be 👍

Heh, thanks @Infinitum! I just wanna see the world learn 😉 Anywho, Pineapple has been down but I did some initial test runs with Katana/SR and Katana/Ice as controls since IMO it was the best set on SO's without any "gimmicks". SR was about 16% slower on average for Katana (My WP avg is 5:41:52, SR was 6:36:09), while you were relatively safe due to 1 divine avalanche letting you go way past softcap, the hits that did land hit hard and did not recover quickly which actually lead to 1 DNF thanks to RNGesus. The main slowdown for SR though was predictably the endurance usage which lead me to using only the lower damage attacks at times, on top of having no taunt aura to keep foes near you and making you chase runners. Ice is about 6% faster so far (5:22 avg) thanks to Icicles, slowing runners, and the ability to get immediate End Returns. However, it is noticeably squishier due to the long recharge on Icy Bastion + Hoarfrost for emergency defenses (and the slows only effect post alpha hits), on top of Divine Avalanche not stacking well vs the Smashing Damage enemies given the Typed defense of /Ice.

Just wanna say, Ice Melee is super underrated. The AoE damage is def there with Frost's wide reach and the footstomp clone. Yes, it does a smidge less damage but it also has a ton of safety to leverage more offensive secondaries 🙂

Ice Melee is a sleeper top set 😉 Its so much fun and Frost is a great AoE

Shin Breaker should do 50% more damage if you do it to a knocked down enemy

One solution may be to have a static damage proc on contained targets. Say, 10-20% of the damage the control effect would have done per hit from the controller. Based on the controller's damage, this should be both not too strong while still being noticeable as well as stackable. Ex: Controller throws out an AoE immob that deals 50 damage per target. Attacking enemies contained by the controller will deal an extra (5) damage per attack while under containment. If another controller layers their control on there, you get another (5) per attack and so on, regardless of the damage the attack does.

I dig it, though I don't think the range check is possible 😞 Of note, I like the idea of "While active, you gain 100% chance on the RNG parts of the set"

Each attack set has it's own version of Build Up / Aim, some with a different name but with the same mechanics under the hood (Ex: Focus Chi for Martial Arts). Though, some variants actually are different, such as Build Momentum in TW which trades raw +Damage for +Momentum, or /Time's Chronos which trades 20% of a damage boost for +Recharge. This came up when talking about Elec Blast in another thread where I found that Aim could be redesigned for the set to help pad out some of it's shortcomings. Taking a note from the other examples, Aim in Elec Blast could become "High Voltage", boosting Endurance Manipulation stats in your elec attacks, and/or +Rech, in exchange for less +ToHit than standard Aim. While the classic BU / Aim are staples and fine as-is, if given the chance what other sets could benefit from using them as unique self-boosts and not just strict "big Damage / ToHit buffs"? I think MA getting a return on End, or an End Discount when using Focus Chi would be nice for one, Amplify in Sonic Attack is another where the name doesn't quite fit "Aim Clone" to me though what it'd do otherwise escapes me. This could also apply to "Confront" powers! Nearly every Melee set has Confront if not just a straight up Taunt power, and looking at the numbers they are some of the most skipped powers period. What if they got some polish as well? For example, Broad Sword's could be changed to "Duel" where you challenge a single target and increase your damage and ToHit very slightly. Street Justice's could simply give you a free combo meter, Psy Melee's could debuff the foe somehow, and so on. What else could we think up? What sets would probably be best with the standards?

My street name is Lil' Galaxy

Cleave wont be hitting 16, but it will be able to hit many more easily with a 40*10ft area

Both CC and Pendulum are 180* on scrappers, and I can consistently hit 10 targets in my test runs. If they are 16 on tanks that should be no issue. Shatter can also hit 5 targets consistently with its 45* on scrappers, both of these will be substantially better 🙂

So this applies to crowd control and pendulum, but not cleave/shatter so they become much better?

Just curious, but what AoE attacks are not affected by the changes?

Also post sentinel regen to all other regens

Thinking on this more, I feel a good majority of sets probably wont change much with other sets, at least compared to another. Claws and Staff would probably have the same comparative performance compared to one another for example on most sets, except maybe /dark where claws' end discount that is baked in would be compared to staff in its soul form. War Mace, TW and MA all had endurance issues Fire and Savage were both very unsafe. Save in particular has endurance and recharge bonuses which could make huge differences with non passive secondaries. Kinetic and Dark both have unique damage boosts which could radically swing behavior depending on the secondary. Dual Blades and Elec also have potential that is squashed due to mitigation issues. Different secondaries could have much better results. IMO, the other sets are all probably secondary-neutral (aside from shield pairings) where they probably perform about as well no matter what. This said, if we focus on just these sets listed above, we could try SR, Ice, Fire and Dark for 4 sets of other runs?

Iirc, the only sets that had end issues were TW, WM, and MA. I recall they all actually had the end bar dip significantly though I think only MA had to wait for end to recover. Though this is just from memory. Looking at my safety rankings, I feel any set that had a 0 or 1 would not see signficant difference with other sets compared to the 2s and 3s, at least in relation to their WP results. Added survival and safety will allow those sets to be more consistent in a way that is significantly better than the others. Sort of the same deal for the top performers with AoE when paired with a secondary with AoE damage powers. Staff with a damage aura will not have as drastic a change as KM or DM.

One thing that I find lacking in the game is a confuse that actually turns the enemy into a "pet". Playing my Dark/Dark controller, I noticed that the ST confuse is often kind of dubious given all the -ToHit making the confused target not even contribute to damage since it couldn't hit other enemies. What if Rad Control had like... "Mutate" where you could apply a high-mag confuse to a target where the target actually gets buffed. Essentially, you go TMNT 2 Ooze on a guy and turn them into a super-mutant that gets a ton of damage and survival boosts for a time while confused, and upon confuse end they de-mutate and throw up / get debuffed much like the Mutation Rez in /Rad.

Really though, just throwing this out there: what exactly "breaks" if certain powers are available at say, lvl 14/24 instead of 35?

So, one thing I have wanted to do for a bit was reorganize my listing with all the tracked factors taken into account. These include: Average Clear Time Standard Deviation Best Time Worst Time Difference (between Best and Worst) Safety We have been looking at only the average clear time without taking everything we measured into account. I went though my personal runs to sort all these factors as seen prior, but I did want to touch on the Safety ranking real quick. In my personal experience with the sets, when I had runs where I died I would end up with 2 deaths conveniently enough. Looking back at either 0 or two deaths, it was then somewhat easy to separate the groups into 2 tiers each: A score of 0 meant that the set is essentially invincible vs the test enemies. A score of 1 meant that while there were no deaths, you still took some bumps and bruises where you could have died if you were sloppy. A score of 2 was set due to these sets having 2 DNF's each thanks to factors such as unreliable mitigation or slow animations on mitigating attacks. A score of 3 was then reserved for the two sets that I felt the least safe while playing and actually had to slow down and retreat at times to survive. This screenshot also shows how I broke down the ranking across 6 different criteria. The Name and the raw number are self explanatory, and like with the time stat on all other fields the scores are ranked smallest to largest for the Safety. The average score is shown above. The Gap column shows breaks between each power set's score, and if a gap is greater than or equal to the average gap (shown on top) it is highlighted and becomes a Tier Division. Tiers are on the left, from S tier down to F tier (not shown here) and next to them will be a number from 1 (S) to 7 (F). The worse the performance, the higher the Tier number. Next to the Gap column is a field where the power set's score is divided by the average score to get a value for how much better or worse than average it performed. If a set gets a 0.80 here, it is 20% better than average, and likewise 20% worse than average if it has a 1.20 here. The last column is the Weighted Score. Taking the Tier Number and adding it to the value from average nets a number between 1 and ~9ish per powerset, per criteria. Adding up all the weighted scores, and sorting from the lowest to the highest we get this: Full Breakdown: Galaxy Tiers Tab Based on my own experiences, this feels about right on SO's given our mission criteria. Though I could see Psy moving a bit higher up with more practice and Elec Melee may feel lower than it should be based on the pairing. B Tier seems to be a sweet spot where the solid sets are. A and C tiers are essentially either slightly better or slightly worse, with them all being within +/- 20% of average performance. Note: The distinction was made for C tier based not on the gap between War Mace and Martial Arts' score, but by the % away from average and how closely the sets with -11%ish values are. Above 20% differences, we see S Tier with Katana and Staff Fighting on the high end, and then surprisingly Elec Melee in D tier and Fiery Melee below in E tier. The former S tier sets have great ST and AoE dps capabilities, on top of having a parry and soft control options. Essentially all you could want in melee sets. On the latter end, Fiery Melee's sheer lack of mitigation was incredibly detrimental when combined with how poor Fire Breath is as a secondary AoE. When compared to Ice Melee's frost and (Ice Stomp), on top of the mitigation it is clear to see which temperature wins out in a vacuum. Elec Melee's score is a shocker given the set's reputation as a powerhouse, but on SO's only and without offensive support from the secondary I found the AoE's either too slow or finnicky (missing Chain induction stinks), and outside Thunderstrike your other mitigation options are either RNG or Thunderclap which scatters enemies and slows you down further and ruins your AoEs. This lead to Elec Melee having poor Standard Deviation, Worst Time and Difference stats, as well as being on the bottom half of Safety. With a proper secondary and IO support it gets a huge boost in performance for sure. Then, we have the S+ Tier and the F tier that are over 40% from average, with S+ being 57% better than average and a whole 19% better than the next best tier. On the high end, Titan Weapons has everything that the S Tier sets had in the last paragraph but just cranked to 11. It simply hits that much harder per swing to pump it up to the top of the line for all the time stats, and having the 2nd best time in a run behind Spines as well as having the "best" Worst Time. On the flip side, Dark Melee sits at the bottom for reasons similar to why Elec Melee was so low. With essentially no AoE coverage due to how Shadow Maul works and how the drains do "Participation" damage, it is very hard to actually leverage Soul Drain's potential for clearing maps effectively aside from beating the crap out of bosses. That said, that ended up being a bit dangerous as you could not fully leverage your -ToHit in a crowd due to how the AoEs work as well which left you vulnerable in ways that other sets that could sweep and knock down foes or boost their own stats / kill minions quickly did not have to account for. This lead to 2 DNF runs for me as even though you can have a field day vs 1 target it's dangerous in a crowd unless you have tools to deal further AoE or mitigate multiple enemies. (seems to have been built for dark/dark... hmmm) So, when it comes to further secondary pairings I had to think on it a bit, and we will need something that fits the following criteria in order to have more drastic results: Preferably has a damage aura or some other direct, AoE damage potential. Sets that did not fair well had issues clearing out a bunch of mobs efficiently and lead to more hits being thrown at them. A set like Spines had 0 issues dancing through mobs due to being able to delete minions so quickly and eliminate tons of potential incoming damage. Secondaries with the ability to knock out a few extra mobs would have a huge impact on certain sets that lack AoE while possibly not effecting AoE heavy sets as much. Has more hard mitigation / emergency powers. Willpower on SO's was able to provide decent enough sustainability to allow you to only die if you were not on your toes. This allowed sets with mitigation to have noticeable impacts on performance as you layered their effects onto WP for great survival, but sets without mitigation or at least high enough (AoE) DPS to eliminate incoming damage suffered. A set that could more directly stop damage or recover reliably without need to retreat and regenerate would provide a different metric for a few sets, and such click powers would also break up attack chains. Off the top of my head the following fit the bill: Bio Armor (has everything) Dark Armor (Damage Aura, CC auras, HP Drain) Electric Armor (Click Heal, Damage Aura, End Drain, Recharge passive) Fiery Aura (Click Heal, Damage Aura, End Drain, AoE Attack, secondary build up) Ice Armor (Damage Aura, Debuff Aura, End Drain, Self Heal) Rad Aura (offers more AoEs, a click heal, absorb, and even +Rech) Of these.... Ice Armor actually looks very interesting to me and I don't think we talked about it much. It is primarily a defense set, which gives it a dynamic where it can simply not take damage due to luck that can help certain sets per run. On top of this, it has a great debuff power in Chilling Embrace which keeps foes near you with it's -Slow and the -Rech and -Dam will lower incoming DPS. Icicles is also a decent damage aura by the looks of it to help with AoE damage. Ice also comes with 3 emergency clicks. An End Drain on a 1min (30s) recharge, a self heal and +MaxHp on a 6min (3min) recharge, and an actually usable T9 that makes you essentially god mode for 30s on a 5min (2.5min... technically 2min) recharge that could all be used a few times per run. Thoughts @Infinitum, @Sir Myshkin, @Demon Shell, @Hopeling? Edit: scratch Ice Armor, without constant regen the hits that do land add up...

Dont epic powers have lower scales and longer recharges than comparable powers? Players already get these powers at lvl 35 as options, what would be so broken about getting the ability to grab them sooner? The intent behind the idea is that epic pools often give ATs a few tools outside their usual MO. Many AT suggestions are sort of in the same boat where it is "melee character that can also support" or the like, so why not allow the use of what we already have?

The only axe attack with non KD is swoop which knocks up. Vs very low lvl enemies, or "light" enemies like clockwork they can get knocked back tho.

If you're looking at a controller, I find the xbox one to be comfortable