Galaxy Brain

I'm sure if you write up a turorial it will not be deleted. At the very least, it it lives on a google doc it can be untouched by mods here.

True! Though if you have capped Def/Res with all those buffs, there would also assumedly be a lot of debuff on the enemy and allies with heals as well? To me, the lines get verrrrrrry fuzzy when a whole team is involved buffing you beyond what any one set can achieve

@America's Angel, I would love to see the objective data on that! 🙂 Do you mean in PvP, Angel? As for the teaming bit this always confused me, there is nothing special about Regen in a team that a SR or Invuln wouldn't get either.

Yep! Current one that has been up is the "Brutal Mission Simulator" (Coined due to being used for specific Brute stuff)

Haha, yeah it has come up quite a lot! The difference though to me is that no other thread has truly been *focused* on it as a topic from so many angles + had data and work put in to explain trends or back up certain claims. For that alone, as @Luminara said the thread has a ton of Merit like with how I was able to isolate certain powerful IOs and provide data on their impact vs the "baseline".

Results time! Part 1 : Isolated IO testing So for this phase, I ran the following build across a handful of missions in my Mission Simulator map (3x runs at 0/3 difficulty) to gauge general performance on a "Generic Slotting" level: All generic IO's was just easier to "Freebie" and is essentially the same as SO slotting if not a *scootch* better. Parry, Resurgence, and Focused Accuracy were NOT USED as they would skew results a bit much for our liking. Broadsword was chosen due to it's very middling performance across the melee sets (for Scrappers), and likewise Willpower is a great middle ground for all defensive stats + no click powers to manage to focus on just the primary powers we will be proccing. During the missions, I tracked the following metrics to compile into average scores at the end: Time = Time to complete the mission from 1st enemy to last Dealt = Damage dealt in total Received = Damage received in total Defeated = Avg number of enemies defeated. This inevitably varied a bit, but it was always around 60ish for every test Activated = Number of power activations Dam/Enemy = Damage Dealt / Per Enemy Rec/Enemy = Damage Received / Per Enemy Act/Enemy = Powers Activated / Per Enemy Time/Enemy = Time spent / Per Enemy Dam Value = The "Damage Value" to equate how much damage you received vs your max HP. A Dam Value of 3 for example means you took 3x your Max HP worth of damage through the mission. Lets see our baseline: The 6:01 avg time lines right up with my prior SO runtimes on Broadsword/WP on 0/3 for Scrapper testing, and everything else lines up to about what I'd expect. Next, lets look at the Isolated IO's: Starting with Force Feedback in both Head Splitter and Disembowel, it was able to proc at least 2 times per encounter if not more but honestly it made little impact overall compared to the baseline. I feel this one in particular needs special setups and synergies to really *shine*. In these powers, FF replaced the Recharge IO. 1 Achilles Heel in each power allowed for a good chunk more damage dealt overall, though curiously a similar amount of activations and time spent per enemy. This is likely due to Achilles not being an immediate effect, and dealing 1000 damage vs a target at 1/100 HP still counts as 1000 damage, where on the Generic runs that second swing would have done 500 damage. Far less, but the result is still the same with needing 2 swings. In order to have a direct comparison, I franken-slotted powers to accommodate Achille's heel while retaining very similar stats to the generic spread of IO enhancement bonuses. Using Pounding Slugfest's stun + Avalanche/Overwhelming Force Knockdowns in the AoE's (Headsplitter was generic as it consistently knocks down) I wanted to test the extra mitigation from these utility IO's. The Knockdown definitely bought time in terms of clear speed, but the actual damage delivered and even received was similar to being generic. As with all procs that are not Force Feedback, I emulated the Generic slotting through Franken-Slotting. Slotting all the unique Def/Res IO's (Max HP, scaling res, 3% def, etc, etc), I was able to take far less damage and result in a much lower Dam Value in the end. It should be noted again, this was back to all generic slotting except fitting in these uniques onto the WP/Pool Power side of things Moving onto Damage Procs... this is where we start seeing big improvements across the board. The damage per enemy increased a bit, but the big changes were the Time, Activations, and Damage taken. Activations compared to Achilles makes more sense vs most of the mobs as two swings with an extra 72 damage thrown in per hit can 2-shot, while Achilles may still need 3 swings to do the job depending on the power. Being able to kill faster / with less swings also slashed the damage taken way down more than I would have expected, and overall would have also meant less endurance consumed / less need for crowd control / etc. If 1 Damage proc is good, how about 2? Squeezing in 2 procs + franken-slotting the powers as best I could to emulate the same values as the generic enhancement, we get the above with the fastest and safest average of them all. It even had the highest amount of enemies on average but still the least amount of power activations to mow through them all. Pretty much take everything I said about 1 damage proc and level shift it +1. Note: these powers had ~38-42% recharge slotting each run which would have actually hampered PPM a good bit outside the Force Feedback runs which I let slide as only 2 powers could slot it. Comparing everything to the Generic Baseline, we see the improvements above. Of note, Achilles did give the biggest boost to Dam/Enemy while oddly 2 Procs roughly matched the baseline, but exceeded everywhere else. Regen / Heal IO's So, these are kind of a drop in the pan for /WP, but I did grab data on them as well based on the time spent in the Baseline mission as we can equate the time spent to a HPS value when looking at the Regen'd HP and heal/PPM of the procs: This is split into two columns: Baseline on WP and +Unbreakable Guard's Max HP on top. The Regen assumes 6 targets within RttC range + Regen + Healing to become a final HPS value. I rounded down the 6:01 avg down to 6:00 for sanity purposes. Over the course of 6 minutes, the stacked Regen uniques would provide an extra 486-515 HP for the /WP character, which based on the avg damage taken per enemy (133, rounded), is a solid amount of extra hits! (About 4 a piece with some wiggle room) Panacea and Power Transfer, at max output should proc 18 times each, healing you for the numbers seen in green next to them. Preventative Medicine likewise would patch you up for that green value if it went off every 90s throughout the mission. In total, if they went off consistently they would provide a whopping 3839 HP recovered/patched! Compared to the baseline, that is an extra ~29 attacks tanked. Combined with the Regen IO's, a full slew of those would in theory provide a great deal of extra mitigation and sustain. Up next of course would be combining as much of these as possible in the best spots possible and seeing what the combined results are. After that, incorporating moderate set bonuses where able and mixing and matching the procs vs bonuses.

I do agree there should be more options to "crank the dial up", though level shifts on enemies should only go so far. A +10 enemy will just be a snoozefest where each minion takes a minute to take down 😛 As for matched rewards, we definitely need that in place to incentivize using the harder content over "radio mish lft". The reason people opt for the easier content is that it is far and away the most efficient. Clearing 100 Council will net roughly the same Exp and inf as 100 Carnies (give or take), though the Council will take far less time per kill (even at balls to the wall speeds, the carnie phasing slows you down) and are far, far less dangerous for most folks. The rewards for fighting Carnies does not justify them as a choice over Council 99% of the time if you gave people the option as it comes to Rewards/Time. Part of this goes into a talk about rebalancing enemy groups to be more/less rewarding based on challenge (Maybe Carnies give much inf and drops, but are naturally much riskier to take on compared to Council) so that most all enemy groups roughly have a similar Reward/Risk/Time ratio. It'd be up to the players to decide which route to take tho. On top of this, more knobs on Story Content / TF's that matter would be sick. I think Radios can stay as the classic "beat em up!" type of content that you can join for mindless roflstomping, with the previous change so that enemy groups are roughly equal in mind. For the story arcs and TF's though I think it'd be super cool to add more knobs to adjust difficulty like in Oroboros, allowing players to change the content in exchange for better merit rewards at the end and incentivizing them over radios even more.

I think more missions like the SBB that encourage smaller team sizes would be cool, as what many folks experience is that past a certain number on a team each individual does less and less (like 6 would be max). Part of it is the psyche of "well we need a full team cus the max is 8" simply because the max is there. Letting go of that can do wonders.

Leprechanukah *

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Its been a bit, but my idea to bypass "true" reflection/thorns damage was to have reflection just be a chain attack off yourself with a limited range (20ft) that would hit a baddie at random in range. If you got thugs A, B, and C around you and thug A fires and triggers reflection, it could shoot to any of the 3 around you. If its 1v1, well there's only one guy to go to! I feel this would be more like an actual "attack" rather than a damage aura since it'd technically be ST, with RNG determining if it fires at all per swing at you. Not sure tbh! Just sort of a failsafe in case other sources stack on you from outside buffs. It'd definitely need testing, but the idea should be that when you unleash Nova Shield that the sacrifice should mean something. Looking back at this, I think it'd be more fun if there were more variances of having shields up vs shields down. Per @Replacement's comment tweaking the design here or there where a power could drop added Absorb or added effect in exchange for embracing different benchmarks: If shields < 1 = X If shields > 1 = Y If shields > 90% = Z

Necroing super hard but this thread got brought up again, do you mean -Absorb Regen for the character?

It all depends on the application of it, but in practice yes it is like more HP or HPS as it exists currently. There is also the order of operations which is important in a clinch where an Absorb vs Heal comparison becomes a factor. Absorb takes away from damage dealt to you, where a Heal repairs your health after damage is applied. If you have say, 10 APS vs 10 HPS, in a situation where you see 15 damage coming in, the absorb would reduce that to 5 and you'd live whereas the 15 would hit you, and you'd die and thus not be able to heal. The same applies to multiple tiny hits which is common especially when paired with resists, or vs a lot of DoT's. If the absorb refreshes fast enough vs the incoming hits, then you essentially took 0 HP damage which has merit over heal when it comes to near-death situations. It's just that currently, Absorb is kind of all over the place with even the blaster sustains all having different refresh rates between X/0.5s to x/2s. They all have the same "APS", but the refresh rate can alter combat situations heavily based on incoming heat. To @MTeague's example, the 3 hits of 100 holds true where resist would be better. But 10 hits of 30 may be mitigated far differently. We just don't have any armor sets with rapid absorb yet to make a good comparison compared to Blasters and Sentinel Regen (which has other changes). In short, Absorb is more mitigation than sustain as it helps prevent defeat more than it refreshes you between encounters, even if it is incredibly similar to Healing. (Credit to @Replacement for the comparison) Anywho, as for the topic at hand for Regen as it stands with regards to Absorb I can see it being added as while it has incredible Sustain, it's mitigation suffers for it. Trading some HPS for equivalent APS may split the difference in key scenarios while still having relatively the same performance.

The key difference is that it is another layer that is once removed from "real" HP. Anything that effects your actual HP or is based on it will not effect Absorb (it always references your base), and vice versa tho there is not much tied to absorb at the moment. It also very much depends on the type of Absorb applied. If you have an actual, *CONSTANT* absorb of say 10, then that is vastly different than 1 tick of 30 every 3 seconds, or one solid chunk of 300 every 30s. If there was a power with an actual, constant layer then it would be more equal to a layer of armor as you simply cannot be defeated by damage less than 10 even if you are at 1 HP.

In practice, the Instant Healing toggle for Sentinels basically provides this. If you absorb X / Sec, then you are also immune to X / Sec damage. To me this makes sense thematically as small wounds probably heal so rapidly that a regenner wont even notice. This differs from other mitigation tho in that it is a flat-rate WALL against damage. If you have say, 30 Absorb / Sec, that means every second you will prevent 30 damage from harming you. A 100 damage attack with no other mitigation = 70 damage, which is roughly like 30% resist. A 50 damage attack tho becomes 20, which is like 60% res. 30 and below? You're immune! However against BIG blows this lessens in effectiveness too.

That'd be an example! A control set with a "switch" to Push or Pull enemies would be super cool. Basically anything that makes you play differently than the other sets.

You'd really like Dominators 🙂

So the key you pointed out was OLD POWERSETS. For a notorious example, why do you think we have Battle Axe / War Mace, Broadsword / Katana? All of those sets used to be much similar and were literal reskins due to being "similar enough to work", like an Echo Fighter in smash bros. There was even a time where Katana had the exact same animations as Broadsword! Over time they got differences, but you can see that both pairs have nearly 1:1 the same power set up with some different numbers here and there. Due to limited tech at the time, as well as being their 1st drafts, many powersets ended up as very "basic" and often distinct in visual theme alone (IE what weapon you held). The devs came a long, long way and by the time power customization came around, "basic" sets with new models would not cut it. There wouldn't be "Icicle Melee" if you can color spines blue and make them transparent, it would not *play differently*. AT's are a great example of mechanical differences mainly due to their Inherents. A Defender and a Corruptor may as well be the same with one doing a scootch more damage and the other a scootch more direct support. Likewise, a Brute and a Scrapper are even MORE alike with one being beefier than the other but having lower base damage, but nearly 1:1 power set up between them. What sets them apart is that Corruptors have Scourge which radically changes what powers they may focus on (rains), or even what they target, and likewise Brutes have Fury that makes them naturally want to play at a different pace than a Scrapper that is more static. Where this gets more specific is the powersets. Yes, we have a good deal of "Basic" ones, but even those that appear basic can have some quirks. Claws for instance has a bit of everything, but what sets it apart is that it has BONUS recharge and end reduction, on top of a stacking build up/attack hybrid. For more obvious examples you have things like Beam Rifle which is a set that revolves around tagging enemies with a key power (Disintegrate) for bonus effects. That Mechanic (tagging a certain guy with a certain thing) changes how you PLAY the set. So in short, Mechanics = Playstyles. Basically WHAT a set does DIFFERENT from other sets to draw players to it over others that they could otherwise emulate via looks. You wont be knocking folks around with Elec Blast, but similarly you wont drain end or have a little pet with Energy Blast, despite both being RP'd as bolts of "Plasma Energy".

That is less mechanical if it is an aesthetic, and we also already have that a bit with Dual Pistols (arguable, get to that soon) and Staff with it's choosable secondary damage. What I'm more looking for is actual playstyle differences. So while yes, swapping damage types would be cool to see more of, it is "already done" by a few sets. Something like a true "Stance Change" associated with a damage type swap is something we do not see, and is something I wish Dual Pistols did more of. There is a missing set between Dual Pistols and Staff somewhere in that the stances should be much more drastic. DP changes the side effect and a portion of damage dealt, and only sorta changes Supressive Fire between a Stun and a Hold. Staff's form finishers do some different stuff which is along the same lines, not as drastic a change as I had in mind but at least all 3 are different. What I would like to see is different swapped stances actually change key moves in a power set. For example if Supressive Fire is a stun normally, with Cryo Ammo it'd still be a hold with a lingering slow component. With Incendiary it could be another high damage ST attack, while with Toxic rounds it could be a super harsh debuff. The stats on the "normal" stun round could be edited to be sort of a balance of them all too with Stun + Some Damage + Some debuff (-Def or such). As-is though, you just swap between a stun or a different flavored hold which does not make the different stances stand out as much from each other. Changing that + maybe 1-2 other powers per stance would make you want to actually swap ammo more often. Even something with an A or B stance that change drastically is something we do not really see often. Imagine a Support Set with a toggle that lets you swap between all buffs or all debuffs!

Just curious, when saving the build does that mean it will return post-wipe or is there a manual thing we'll do after?

Yes 😄

Mega late to the thread, but I recently saw that Jump Kick actually has a 1.5s animation time just like Air Superiority and does the same damage. It's just it has a 20% chance of knock unlike Air Sup's 100%.

Tons of armors have slow/rech resist! Invuln, Energy, Fire, Ice *especially*, and so on. @Bopper has an excellent write up on regen already which can be found in the thread that @Troo linked: One thing we all agree on is that a set based on clicks 100% needs recharge resistance (negative rech res lol). Regen strives of reactive click powers and it needs to be an explicit reward using them than a liability. I feel like a properly played regen should be the toughest set to put down and keep down as opposed to one that goes down all the time, but a large onus is on the player to maintain that.

Battle Axe does!

So I wanna highlight this because the latter is actually super super important to differentiate. If Mez RESISTANCE, IE the ability to cut down the time you spend mezzed were prevalent to take, that would be a huge boon for squishies while not really mattering too much to armored classes as they already have protection and do not get mezzed much if at all. The main thing about being mezzed is that being unable to act sucks, let alone for 8+ seconds on top of more mezzes piling onto you to extend the mag and duration. I for one would gladly choose "oh, I may get mezzed but only for like a second or two" over other options any day. You're spot on as well here. The real problem is that so many pool powers are just underdeveloped to the point of not being competitive with other picks, not only within other pools (we all know the top pool power choices) but from primary picks as well. Outside Air Superiority with it being a very nice mez, the other pool attacks are all either very situational or not powerful enough to be considered over another pick for most AT's. I feel like if the pool attacks were treated more like epics (many have TINY recharges and thus tiny damage), and relegated to have better niches (Flurry is an actual ST destroyer on a long recharge, Air Sup is more of a mez, Jump Kick is in between with good damage and a decent chance to knock) and then give them the Fighting Pool treatments where the more investment in a pool the better all the abilities get (each speed power taken boosts the others, perhaps granting end reduction on Hasten and Whirlwind, damage on Flurry, etc) could go a long way. After all, your point where you are getting all these powers INSTEAD of primary powers should not be a trap.