Galaxy Brain

Gonna give this a bump, but TFs and Ouro missions have separate optional difficulty increases. Is it possible to port those to all/any content and perhaps scale rewards to those?

Another note is that the secondary and other powers are not considered. Dark for example has crap times, but Soul Drain allows for amazing output on your secondary set and epics. /Elec may be the next secondary to try out as it has a damage aura, +Rech/Movement, and a click heal to think about instead of the much more passive /WP. All those factors could be big for certain sets.

Less that they get containment, but how about damaging a controlled target (via a Controller's controls), you proc the Control's damage again? Sure its not the same as a blaster hitting twice, but hitting the control power's damage over and over would be significant.

Honestly, it would be awesome if various animations could be ported between sets if the timing matched

Well, that is an unknown right now. At the very least, looking into how many people: Use IO's at all Use just generics instead of SO's Use sets Use unique / special IO's (like LotG) Is something that is just speculation. Seeing that would at least be a point of reference when it comes to discussion. If we see many people are using IO's, and that certain sets are left in the dust, maybe it'd be nice to go in and just tweak the bonuses for like... +Damage / etc to be worthwhile route to chase over the super popular sets.

Kinetic Melee, along with Elec and Claws, may have drastically different results with the addition of a single KB to KD io. In my KM runs, the cone was detrimental since it scattered the whole mob out of range of all other attacks except a 2s ranged attack.

So, we have at least 5 runs per set (Kinetic Melee I'm keeping at 5 since it still averaged 7:19 per run...) Here are the current standings: Breaking it down per 10 sec intervals: Titan Weapons = -0:40+ (Results split between runs with and without a cone power used) Psy Melee = -0:30+ (about 5 sec slower than top) Staff, Katana = -0:20+ Claws, War Mace, Battle Axe = -0:10+ Spines, Dual Blades, Street Justice, Rad Melee, Savage, Broadsword = -/+ 0:10 Martial Arts, Ice Melee = 0:10+ Elec Melee = 0:20+ Fiery Melee = 0:30+ -gap- Kinetic Melee, Dark Melee = 1:00+ Lets look at just the average resist values without the chance to encounter: Titan Weapons, Psy Melee = -0:40+ Staff = -0:30+ Katana, War Mace = -0:20+ Claws = -0:10+ Rad, Battle Axe, Street Justice, Dual Blades, Savage = -/+ 0:10 Martial Arts, Elec Melee, Broadsword, Ice Melee, Spines = 0:10+ Fiery Melee = 0:20+ -gap- Dark Melee = 0:50+ Kinetic Melee = 1:00+ And now what changes with the ADJ Average resist applied: (Taking into account the chance of running into a resistant enemy if we were to throw RNG enemies at the sets) Titan Weapons, Psy Melee = -0:40+ Staff, Katana = -0:20+ War Mace, Claws = -0:10+ Battle Axe, Rad, Street Justice, Dual Blades, Spines, Savage = -/+ 0:10 Broadsword, Martial Arts, Ice Melee, Elec Melee = 0:10+ Fiery Melee = 0:20+ -gap- Kinetic Melee, Dark Melee = 1:00+ Patterns at this time: Sets with reliable AoE damage and AoE / Self mitigation (Knockdowns usually) have the best clear times. Titan, Psy, Staff, War Mace and Claws all have reliable methods to knock people on their butts + Deal good damage. Katana, Staff and TW can boost their own defense in melee range and deal good damage. Sets near the bottom may have very good Mitigation or Damage but they lack in an area that the top performers do not lack in. Martial Arts has poor AoE damage and Mitigation compared to the top sets, though its not terrible. Ice and Dark melee have lots of mitigation, but either lack significant damage or in Dark's case just lacks AoE damage in order to wipe spawns. Elec and Fire have plenty of AoE but their Mitigation left room for improvement (Elec had either RNG knockdown, or scattered enemies which effects your damage tremendously... also an ST damage problem). Kinetic has the problem of scattering enemies to ruin DPS, on top of slow key animations. The rest of the sets fall somewhere in between so far. I think once we get more runs per set (Ideally 20+) the tiers will be more defined (Kin and Dark withstanding....)

Agreed, but my goals are to ideally: 1) Show how prominent IO use actually is in order to gauge "Ok yeah, IO balance is probably a factor" and 2) Wow, all these IOs are taken over these ones. What can we do to make the lesser ones better? I'm of the camp that a lot of IO's potential is actually wasted. Procs, Defense and Recharge are all much much better than most other stats you could build for. Being able to chase other stats to comparatively equal value could to a lot to make IO's even more diverse and fun.

I mean sure, but at that point for a blaster the nuke's primary function is sort of wasted 😕 Sure you drained all the end (you wont drain *your* end anymore) but they are still alive. Slotting for damage kills all but bosses and you end up overall safer since there are less things able to attack you once they get 1 tic of end back.

A no strings attached build could be anything though which could skew results. Aiming for what most people shoot for in builds I think would not only be representative of most builds but also appropriately push the sets in ways that we would see more uniform results. Say I build to softcap everything + tons of procs and you build for tons and tons of recharge instead on the same power combos, those would be two totally different outcomes.

Best bet may be to just try and hit certain thresholds as each set would be different. Such as: Hit at least +20% extra S/L defense to mirror performance we saw from Parry Powers Hit at least +X% recharge (70%?) Place at least 1 proc where possible in your offensive powers Slot all the global uniques (Panacea, etc) that you can Everything else around those goals would sort of be gravy based on the primary set in question. Adding in other pool powers would help here too.

I'm down. Nothing is more frustrating than whiffing a hidden AS.

We have gotten awesome data on AT's played, Powersets & Combos chosen per AT, and even individual power choices all at various level ranges. Is it possible to gather similar information on what players are slotting? Given how active the community has been when it comes to sharing information and beta testing, I am curious how prolific IO usage actually is. We often see the rhetoric of "The game is balanced around SO's!" tossed around, and that is fine as a baseline as it is the basic enhancement all players find in combat and from stores. That said, the IO system has been part of the game for a proportionately longer time than just SO's, and with all the information available to us I highly doubt that most players have not used the system. What would be interesting to know is: How many players only use SO's? How many players only use Generic IO's? Stats on what IO sets are most commonly slotted? Could just be like, "X players have an IO from Y set", etc. Stats on what individual IO's are most commonly slotted? Separated by Unique IOs, Procs, ATOs, etc... How many players have Fully Kitted Out characters? Defined as having say... >75% of their powers with Set-IOs? I think data on IO usage, if possible, would be a valuable point of reference when it comes to all sorts of discussion about the game going forward. Thoughts / suggestions for other data points?

Well, we could try and just cram as many purples as we can that would fit each set.... the idea of course being that we are still trying to push the primaries up to see how they perform. Should probably avoid non universal procs in WP for taunt or -ToHit, as well as try not to use the ATO sets if possible since they have more rng. @Sir Myshkin, any thoughts?

Well, what would be the "high"?

So, as we get closer to getting at least 10 runs per primary on SO's, I think we should start to look at IOs. Every set has ST melee attacks, at least 1 Melee AoE, places to slot defense IOs / Resist IOs, and then pool powers can give us a standardized Ranged Attack / Etc. What would be a good, basic IO spread we could probably standardize? I would like to avoid the ATO at the moment as by nature it throws a very big chunk of RNG to the performance with both uniques, but looking into fitting LOTG, and other common unique items would be worthwhile! Edit: As @Infinitumrecently said in the Tank Feedback thread, it is nigh impossible to have a "Set" IO standard... so maybe just reaching for certain goals like +20% Defense to S/L, +50% recharge, etc?

That is what this was based on 🙂

It'd be nice if it were like, if you defeat an enemy with CS it will recharge PS, or something like that where you can more reliably trigger it.

I wouldnt think that merging two nigh identical powers into one power breaks the cottage rule

Another update, I have added columns to the consolidated ranking to accommodate for the adjusted resistances I mentioned earlier. The full sheet for that can also be found in this thread: Common Resist Breakdown The idea behind the ADJ resist is that it takes both the resist (positive and negative) per damage type across enemy factions, and then factors in the likelyhood of encountering said resistance values. So if we were to run these averages against a gambit of random enemies, the ADJ resist value would alter the times by roughly the resist amount. If need be, I could also include the raw values and show how the sets fair when pinned up against the average actual resists without accounting for the odds of running into them. *Note for Staff Fighting: Even though it can use non-smashing damage in a few attacks, the body form perks I think overcome the advantage of using 2 attacks with added less / non resisted damage on the whole as it is still like 90% smashing.

Tried Martial Arts and Savage Melee for a few runs each (8/5) last night. Both are so far middle of the pack with 6:19 and 6:09 averages respectively. Martial Arts is funny in that it is the only set so far that is faster with less minions and more boss spawns. I can kung fu the crap out of hard targets faster than any set so far, but when it comes to being surrounded, Dragons Tail then bopping foes one at a time is not the fastest. That said, so far it feels like the only set that could also reliably hand out naps without a massive damage boost like Soul Drain as after DT it can just tab target and drop targets one at a time. It seems MA is also incredibly endurance hungry though, as I actually lost enough to drop a toggle doing this. The secret karate technique came into play a lot with the set. Eagle's Claw has a secret +15% crit chance (or 15% damage bonus on tanks and brutes) for the next attack queued up. Eagle > Dragon, especially after a build up could reliably handle crowds to get such a good average for a set with just 1 AoE attack. Eagle > Axe Kick similarly can whittle down a boss very fast when it leads to the other ST attacks. Overall very solid, and suprising average time for a set with only a tiny PBAoE. Savage is only halfway done and seems to be similar to MA so far. You can melt bosses thanks to Hemorrhage, and the AoE is not bad either though I am getting used to the DoT damage from the set. It may be faster to rip into foes and then move on and let them bleed out, but that is all RNG? I havent noticed a difference in performance between letting with PBAoE and Hemmorage rip with 5 stacks vs 4 stacks yet to avoid exhaustion, though this may require specific testing aiming for either strat specifically. I will say though it is difficult to aim for 4 stack burns when the Build Up puts you at 5 stacks, and using a spender exhausts you still (though using it after exhaustion is groovy). Savage leap is also very fun and an awesome opener to grab stacks fast. Itll be interesting how it plays out in a 5 vs 4 stack comparison 🙂

Added in @InfinitumPsy runs, and I only took KM to 5 seeing as it was not gonna break 7min avg for me. I think its a front runner for being heavily, heavily altered by IO performance when we get to that tho.

Finished WM and Staff, getting nigh identical performance as @Cawshun. Staff is all around very solid 🙂 But onto Kinetic Melee... its average so far is about 7:20, only faster than Dark Melee. Kinetic Melee though feels like a set that was made with IOs in mind. All its powers have very slow animations, and its Power Siphon mechanic is straigh forward but has 1 gimmick where critting (for scrappers) with Concentrated Strike can recharge PS instantly. The cone attack is ranged, which is nice, but it only hits 5 targets and it has a chance to deal mag 3 knockback to each. On top of the very slow animation, it is just clunky to leverage especially when you want targets nearby to power siphon with your other attacks. A KB to KD io here would make it multiple times better instantly, as unlike Claws it does not have the speed or 100% knock chance of shockwave to work around that it can scatter. Concentrated Strike can hit like a truck and fully saturated with Power Siphon can hit like a *big* truck. That said, at 15sec recharge on SOs, the gimmick where it trades crit damage for an instant recharge on Power Siphon is very lackluster. PS recharges in about 1min on SOs, so you have about 4 tries to use CS for insta recharge if you use PS > CS right away, but its more like 3 as you want to siphon into CS for juicy damage. In my runs, this only occurred about once per mission. That said, pumping more recharge into KM will let you not only CS more but just PS more in general. Scrapper specific, but the +Crit ATO would be amazing for the 50% chance to crit and rech PS again. I think it's really poor at base level, but has a ton of potential as you add IOs into the mix.

Itd be nice if just, some of the powers were shared outright. I havent played khelds in a bit, but dont versions of the melee, ranged and AoE attacks appear in both the human and form change? Why not just let them be used with different stats

I firmly beleive that shatter made all the difference. Being able to guarentee 2+ hits every time I swung that cone means either 2+ dead or knocked down targets. The other "pencil cones" dont have that luxury.