Galaxy Brain

She knows what she did

The purpose of this was to get a "baseline" for the primaries, so ideally this would be the measuring stick to compare further tests on 🙂 The purpose of using /WP and SO's was to us an armor that was not intrusive to the primary so we could isolate it's performance as much as possible. On SO's, it provides 6.1% Smashing Def + -4.5% ToHit to foes melee range (effectively 10.6% def), 35% Smashing Resists, and a bunch of Regen as foes gather round. So, you're hit about 39% of the time, and when you're hit you only take 65% of the damage. Effectively 74.65% damage mitigation when averaged out. Lets factor in the Myshkin build: With this IO spread, the mitigation would jump to 98.5% as you cap S/L resist, and with the -ToHit you get effectively 43.95% Smashing Defense. This is not including the procs / Recharge (66.3% without Hasten) and other perks like +Acc/ToHit, a bit of damage, etc. For the sets that had +Mitigation as an advantage, and those that lacked it as a disadvantage this will be a huge game changer. Eyeballing it, e build's IO spread could easily be replicated by most all melee sets as well making for a decent starting point for the high-end. On the lower-end, I wonder if runs with just minimal "patch that up" style enhancements like the KD proc or such would have a big impact? Runs on the IO's should be much easier as you'd be much more efficient, its just a matter of comparing the times to their SO counterparts as well as the comparative ranking.

Been curious on this topic for a bit, but besides Illusion which is Controller-only, and Mind Control which seems to be much better on Dominators... are there other primaries that are much better or worse on a Controller than a Dom?

Don't mean to triple post, but after talking with @Hopeling I have added in the Standard Deviation to the columns: SPREAD = The "accuracy" of the Average. The smaller the spread, the more accurate our Average time is for the runs. SD (Standard) DEVIATION = Shows the consistency of the runs, similar to the difference between the Best and Worst times but averaged across all runs. The smaller the Deviation, the more consistent the sets.

I'm going to see if I can mulligan run a couple sets this week for better times. Also, going by @Sir Myshkin's willpower slotting for IOs on a prior page I'll start a few comparison runs too. I think going right to high end with a decked out WP and such may prove more impactful for some of the sets where survival was the issue, and bring into question the sets that had ample survival as a plus.

It sounds more like we need additional difficulty settings / content where control would be valued. Adding damage procs to team mates hitting targets you applied a power to is neat, but it kind of strips the control aspect away. If new settings were introduced where like, enemies had toggles and such that a hold / stun would break then suddenly controllers become awesome.

That is a bit drastic of a change, even if the prices were like x2 the cost of the bids on AH. Lets keep this on the topic of just figuring out IO data. Are there any specific data points that haven't been brought up?

I do want to touch on the test as a whole real quick. Survival was a decent factor for a lot of set's performances. WP can let you sustain damage and recover quickly, but it has limitations even with these basic enemies where you can get pummeled to death pretty easily if you just stood in a group. Even a smaller group can be dangerous due to how RTTC scales. Several sets like Savage and Fire had real trouble with certain groups since they lacked either any mitigation besides "kill them first", or they had unreliable mitigation like Battle Axe where most attacks only had a chance to Knockdown / stun / etc. Sets with recorded DNF: Battle Axe - 2 Deaths, KD did not proc in time to prevent death Dark Melee - 2 Deaths, vs a ST you are invulnerable but the lack of AoE damage and mitigation is very risky when tackling groups Dual Blades - 2 Deaths, unlike other sets it had guaranteed Knockdown mitigation but the lengthy animations meant missing those leaves you open to several attacks. Elec Melee - 2 Deaths, mitigation is tied to very slow powers, or ones that scatter the mob everywhere and then slows you down considerably Fire Melee - 2 Deaths, no mitigation aside from well.. killing with fire. Several moments where kiting and pausing needed to happen Martial Arts - 2 Deaths, the % chance to mitigate enemies is a gamble as always, making it almost all ST attacks to do this is even riskier Rad Melee - 4 Deaths! Lack of guaranteed soft control is noticeable. The heal relying on Contamination is funky. Savage Melee - 2 Deaths, no real mitigation outside of a ST knockdown with RNG These are all factors to consider for how hard some of these sets could be pushed if by themselves. The meta of the tests has leaned to herding up enemies yes, but that also requires player skill in order to navigate and round enemies up effectively. I would also argue that it can better emulate a team environment as the enemies moving about / deciding to run gives more chaos into the mix that other players could provide. The test as is I think still stands true as a solid simulation of your average mission. Though, it would be interesting to maybe add in some more X factors like a mob or two with debuffs or separate powers to deal with that may make herding not as profitable?

Great times! Unfortunately, KM is still on the slower end but you bumped it up a good bit EDIT: If we just use @Sir Myshkin's time, it goes up above both Elec and Fire

Definitely! I am only one data point of course, the more people who join in the better picture we get.

Right, instead they should buff the crappy ones. But to do that, I still think we need to look at which are left behind / how many people are using IOs at all. I think we all agree that the IO system is awesome, its just that certain bonuses are much more valuable than others and if the less valued became better it would be great for diversity

This did inspire me to look into the BEST vs WORST times specifically OVERALL: Top 6 Best: Spines, TW, WM, Rad, Claws, Ice Top 6 Worst: TW, Staff, Katana, Claws, Psy, STJ TW and Claws both being in the top 3rd of sets for both top and "worst" times is intriguing. Top 6 most consistent: Katana, STJ, Savage, Staff, Kinetic, Dark Bottom 6 least consistent: BS, Rad, Elec, Spines, Ice, WM Despite TW and Claws being in the top 1/3 of the other lists, neither boast a <1:00 difference in timing. Katana, Staff and STJ are all super solid, and it shows that having a good "worst time" may be indicative of decent balance? Of the least consistent times, Rad/Elec/Spines all make sense due to the very AoE vs ST nature of those sets. Though BS/Ice/WM are interesting. WM has the most runs of any set so that could just be player difference, but BS and Ice are a bit 🤔 BS especially as it should be consistent like Katana! PERSONAL: Top 6 Best: Spines, TW, WM, Rad, Claws, Ice Top 6 Worst: TW, Spines, Staff, Katana, WM, Claws Spines and WM join TW and Claws for me Top 6 most consistent: Katana, STJ, Staff, Savage, TW, Kinetic Bottom 6 least consistent: Ice, Spines, WM, BS, Rad, Elec TW joins the pack on my personal consistency list, and the least consistent mirrors the overall. Ice may be due to the nature of it's AoE attacks / Ice Patch's small size though. BS I have no idea.

TBF, I was using it between mobs when other things were recharging or before engagement. But another round where I "mulligan" some runs without it could be good. This is a great point. As I did the tests.... 190 times (damn lol), I inevitably must have gotten better as I went in terms of navigation and knowing how to best round mobs up / etc, that and there being either transferable skills based on certain sets or even just optimizing a certain set as I played it more and more. Going back and "mulliganing" maybe the bottom 5 runs may be useful to kind of fight that, but then what made those runs slow may not have been skill so much as "I missed a lot" or "those dang runners...", or factors such as Boss vs Minion spawns depending on the set (Spines, Elec, Rad) As I mentioned above, X factors such as runners, misses (hurts ST far more), and the split some sets have in their AoE vs ST output has a lot to do with how the runs performed. For example with Spines, my worst run was when I had 2-3 extra boss spawns vs my best run which had no extra boss spawns + ample minion spawns. I think what made TW so consistent for me was that there was no difference in speed between the ST and AoE capability of the set, and it could chain knockdowns or flat out kill fast enough to negate runners like Spines and Ice could. I think it would be great for you to try TW! I went into Psy blind, and you can see the results for yourself 😛 I think having "high exp vs fresh exp" runs would be a valid data point.

@Infinitum, is skipping DS normal for all TW builds especially at the SO level? I went into this test trying to use all powers as often as possible as no set except arguably claws has low tier attacks that are not beneficial to throw in pre IO / outside bonuses. Arguing that a set is not as good if you up and skip a power is a bit.... odd? I even tried "bad" attacks like boggle to see if itd have an impact, but at the "base" level on SOs I think DS and staff's cone parries offer a lot to be passed over until recharge and +def from IOs come in. 27 sec faster is also significant when you factor in that nearly every other gap between sets is single digits. I do think as attack chains get fleshed and certain attacks get dropped, such as DS, it will become more interesting to see what changes tho!

@Sniktch, I'm not so sure that claws wont see a jump in performance. Stacked follow up and more Spin can do a ton of work. Your other predictions seem on the nose, though I think that we will see a big shift with Dark if we add in secondary offensive abilities.

@Hopeling, @Lord_Cyclone91, @Infinitum I finally finished, 10 runs per primary: Sets are ordered by my average per 10 runs. The next column is the swing vs my overall average, then the swing vs the Total Average, and finally my individual averages vs the respective set's total average. These are not too different than the total averages below (though, there is a big bias as I have done the most runs....) Total Averages: More or less the same as my runs, though there are a few shifts. Below, I include the "Swing Shifts" to show how resistances either raise or lower the ranking of certain sets. Adj Resist (Factoring in the chance to encounter resists): Avg Resist (the average resistances ignoring encounter rate): What we see here on the totals is that most all sets fit within +/- 30 seconds of the respective averages. Fiery Melee sits just outside the average on the low end which is very troubling to me given the set should thematically be on the high end. In every chart, we see 3 outliers that sit at either + / - 1:00 Minute .... Kinetic Melee = +1:14 avg KM suffers greatly from an AoE that scatters mobs, requiring you to give chase or use a laggy, lower damage Ranged Attack. You can build up decent damage boosts, but the set itself has a hard time taking advantage of it due to a slow animating PBAoE and a smidge slower than average T3 melee, on top of the cone making you lose out on additional damage boosting from other melee attacks. This leads to the best strategy being cycling through just 3 ST attacks in melee range to build up damage, and cycling in your PBAoE. Concentrated Strike can be decent as the last attack you toss out on a boss before Power Siphon ends, but in general it is far superior to just cycle the basic attacks due to the very slow animation. The gimmick of CS recharging Power Siphon is neat, but incredibly unreliable to be almost a non factor in the 10 missions, and hundreds upon hundreds of fights. KM also lacks burst damage due to needing to build up damage over a few attacks, so while you can get 156% damage boost on a Scrapper, this is after waiting on 5 attacks to animate where other sets can probably throw out 5 attacks at 100% damage boost via Build Up and do more damage than KM over 20 seconds at base. Secondary Sets, Epics and IOs would make a HUGE difference with this set. Dark Melee = +1:22 avg DM is very very safe, but has the worst AoE damage of all the melee sets. Sure, you have Soul Drain and the End Drain PBAoE does some damage, but the latter is on a very long timer and the only option you have to take advantage of the long duration, big damage boost is a narrow 5-target cone with a long animation. Without the ability to throw around your big damage boost to a wide array of targets, it is almost wasted as you take longer time to cycle from target to target, one by one to clear a mission. DM has a solid base, but by itself it is very anemic. Paired with an offensive secondary or epic and things would probably change. Titan Weapons = -1:16 avg The elephant in the room, there was only 1 set in my runs that consistently had runs under 5 minutes each aside from 1 run where a guy ran into the boxes and made me chase. TW has 4 AoE attacks. 2 of these are cone attacks that can often knock foes on their butt, another is a cone that grants you +Def, and the last is a huge PBAoE that knocks foes down, deals DoT and has a 1 second animation. I could do whole string sin momentum and never need to touch an ST attack. Defensive Sweep is actually your fastest attack out of momentum, and recharges in ~3 seconds with 1 SO. Lining up with even just 2 targets guarantees momentum with minimal downtime, and allows all your other AoEs to hit hard in seconds. On the ST side, you have a very hard hitting attack that deals -Res on hit, a solid ST attack that can knock down, and a 1 sec momentum locked ST attack that deals DoT, knocks and can disorient. The cone attacks have strong enough DPA to be used in a ST rotation and while saturated with enemies you can work in defensive sweep for melee defense and knock out targets around the boss easily. TW is endurance heavy sure, but unlike other sets I had endurance issues with it killed efficiently enough and locked down targets easily enough that I was never in any danger and could keep chugging non stop. Interestingly, outside of momentum HELPED because the slow animation let me recover endurance for the next attack! The slow animations are straight up a non issue after playing literally every other melee set outside Stone, SS and NRG. I NEVER missed getting momentum due to cones having multiple hit chances, and while in momentum all my attacks had faster average animation times than comparable powers in other melee sets while hitting like WM's shatter. Build Momentum was not even necessary half the time as I could wipe an entire mob in just normal rotations with Defensive or Titan sweep in between which cleared most of the mob anyways and sped up the following AoE. Build momentum was great when I did have a legit gap or when enemies were gathering around me, and even as I took hits I could just Build Momentum - Whirling Smash and knock everyone down or straight up clear the minions, and follow with the other cones to keep them controlled or dead. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I will add in more details on sets later on.

@Infinitum, I just ran 10 missions with Psy Melee after a good chunk of practice runs... and I ended up with +0:30 to your average! I had an amazing run with 5:12 where I felt like Insight just procced every chance it could... but then I had 7 runs that took over 6 minutes. Partly due to what I feel was X-COM quality hit rates today (87% on +1 enemies shouldn't mean 4 misses in a row reeee), but was there a flaw in my strategy? I would try to herd up a group by running past and hitting a few enemies to kite as I usually do, which while writing this I realize I could have used brawl, but that could trigger insight every once in a while. If I got insight, I would stay and try to take advantage as much as possible and wipe up spawns as fast as I could while dragging more to the next encounter. As insight procced, I tried to rotate in Psy Sweep and Mass Levitate as often as possible (unless I got a group bunched then I would start with mass Lev to get a near guaranteed proc) and go to town. If I managed to get insight with a ST attack while bunching enemies up for Mass Lev range, I would immediately Build Up to take advantage of the DoT. I found myself not going for Greater Psy Blade often due to it ending insight, opting to use it only when near the end of insight on bosses, or at the end of Concentrate + Insight to maximize damage potential. I also had tried a run or two whee I just tried Psy Melee as a "normal" set, and got similar times to when I tried to focus on making the best out of insight. In the latter, I sometimes found myself hesitant to throw out certain moves (mainly the AoEs) in the case that I "waste" Insight on the few mobs left that by the time I traveled to the next pack, I would not be able to use Insight vs them. Is it possible I may have just been very unlucky today with proccing Insight / Crappy ToHit rolls? Overall, the set seems to have a steep learning curve due to the RNG nature of Insight compared to nearly all other "Combo" type sets. I'm also surprised that Concentrate doesn't interact with or grant Insight. Oh, Boggle was "ok" in my testing. I would occasionally boggle an enemy in a nearby group as I fought to throw out some damage before I got to that pack, but the impact on time I think was non existent.

But it is still incredibly powerful along with defense, to the point of it always being useful when you compare to practically any other bonus. Anyways, the point of the thread here is to see how many people are even using IO's to start. Until we get that I'm unsure of how big a leg we have to stand on when talking bonuses.

Right, but I think the same effect could be made if more IOs were competitively viable options that made you want to explore and play more.

Right, but that is a different can of worms (somewhat tied to MMO retention design, but yeah...)

Elec Assault is a different beast than Elec Blast. Honestly I think at this point I would be fine if we just had attacks that could chain, a faster SC animation, and Voltaic Sentinel getting a boost in some way (duration? faster fire rate / more damage? less cast time?)

Thats sorta the main thing, many IO's are just so dang good that they overshadow all other choices.

Fair point, though that may play into the damage formula and the end cost / recharge may need to go up.

I don't see Containment being confusing...? Introducing my GF to CoH as a newbie to games in general, she was able to pick it up pretty quickly: "Oh, if I hit them with one thing, the next does more damage" The double damage numbers help too

As of testing on the SO level, it is fairly middle of the road. It lacks mitigation outside of a single-target knockdown and killing quickly sometimes. The +Recharge from stacks can be great on some sets with self heal clicks / general click powers, but using the powers in Savage "as intended" locks you out of that bonus for 12 seconds.... Playing in a controlled environment in the Scrapper thread, it seems the best option is to: Savage Leap to start and get Blood Frenzy Stacks fast Fight a bit and then use the PBAoE or Hemorrhage depending on the threats Use Blood Lust ASAP to get stacks back and get +DMG and Rech This is where it gets weird.... you could either double-dip and throw out another strong PBAoE or Hemorrhage and *lose* your bonuses.... or you could just hold onto the stacks and be stuck without your best AoE or ST attack Savage Leap in this scenario feels wasted if you are not getting bonus stacks either, and the long recharge makes you want to save it to boost stacks fast Option 1 is to spend your... spenders again ASAP and do a bit more output but then still be stuck in exhaustion Option 2 is to not use those 2 powers for the duration of Blood Lust and then wait till you have 4 stacks so you are not exhausted, which I do not have data on which is worse.... In my testing, I found that the max power spenders did not *feel* too impactful from fight to fight, not like with Staff or Street Justice being direct comparisons. With those sets, it is very obvious what the stacked bonus does when you spend it and there is no downside to using your spenders. With Savage, its not like Hemorrhage does 5% of the enemy's Max HP per DoT at 5 stacks or Rending Flurry deals x2 damage in x2 the radius / targets to make the exhausted effect necessary IMO. If they had more output at max stacks (Such as, you heal for the damage dealt or something....) then I don't think anybody would mind the downside.