Galaxy Brain

That's literally all I linked to as well but its "a darned pylon test!" So they dont count 😛 Farming doesnt reflect actual gameplay for the majority of players, and I would argue that insps are far too RNG to factor.

If you wanna do that, just use a storm and gust on max recharge. Controllers also mitigate knockback and there are 3 ats (including sents) that have aoe immobilizes... 4 if you have somebody with web nades from mace mastery... that can negate knockback nowadays. This is adding too many variables atm, I'd rather run numbers on the sets to compare to one another.

I'd really like to just emulate the data on melee sets first as the question raised is if TW overperforms compared to other melee sets. If this is a solid benchmark tho it can be used for other characters in the future.

Incoming damage isnt that important for this test at the moment as they will all be running the same defense. Though mitigation through attacks will be a factor. I'm very hesitant on using a farm map as it doesnt reflect normal gameplay through missions 🤔

*bumping to say I made a massive edit to my last post regarding what could be a test used to compare melee sets

That is a really good anecdote @Sniktch. That is more or less an extreme version of power creep where an update made a strategy downright broken instead of just "incredibly good", but sometimes that happens unintentionally and the only healthy thing to do is dial back what ended up too powerful else the fun is compromised. ------------------------------------------- But, as mentioned we don't have a good way to even see who or what is performing in what capacity in a "normal" environment. I can run scenarios on every primary, but to be fair I think they should all share the same secondary.... Shield is disingenuous for a global test as some sets just can't be used with it. So I'm going to take that out of the pool of 13 Scrapper secondaries for the moment. Looking at the rest for a candidate of your "Average" secondary, I want to look into what the most common combat-related stat may be to make our pick. There are no secondaries that offer 0 offensive boosts, but the least impactful out of straight up attacks, damage auras, and recharge boosts must be End Management. 4/12 have a Quick Recovery type power, 4/12 have an End Drain, and 1/12 have a +End button. Overall 9/12 armor sets (with shield excluded) have some method of endurance management, making it a fair trait to have in a "real world" example. Of those 9, Willpower has the least extra effects that would effect combat such as damage auras, click powers, or other goodies. Luckily, WP is also one of the most popular armor picks period to further back it up as our secondary of choice: I'll throw in Combat Jumping as that seems to be an incredibly common pick for nearly all melee players as well. With QR and Stamna 3 slotted, and all WP toggles + CJ running without End Redux (opting for 3 slotting relevant defensive stats, except CJ which gets 1 slot), WP will Recover 3.45 end/s, drain 0.9/s, for a net recovery of 2.55/s. As for the tests to run through, we need something that mirrors normal content to a degree. A team environment is too chaotic to get real data from, despite having the varied enemies and large groups. There's just too many X factors. Solo at +0/x1 is far too easy.... but solo at +0/x3 seems about right. +0 gives us enemies that are either even-con or +1 level to the character, and x3 gives us groups between 5-10 enemies which is perfect for melee sets to dive into with their target caps. Last night, I wanted to see if I could get a read on what a typical mission at this difficulty threw at you, so I went through 10 "Defeat the boss!" style radio missions at +0/x3 on my Claw/EA scrapper. This took me through Sewers, Labs, Office Buildings and Warehouses (luckily no caves...) which gave me varied encounters of different enemy types and group sizes, as well as group locations that were either very close or spread apart. Here is what I found: On average, there were about 10 groups of enemies per mission from start to finish (finding the group with the end boss). On average, timing between groups that were close enough to aggro both at once by accident and those that I needed to go to another room for, the time between groups was about 8 seconds. There was approximately ~700 enemies I chewed through in these 10 missions, and I made sure to survey each spawn (EA's stealth helped here) to note what types of groups there where. On average, I saw the following: About 30% of spawns were +1 lvl compared to +0, with no pattern of what types were +1 About 30% of spawns were groups of 5 Minions, and 2 LT's About 20% of spawns were groups of 8 Minions, and 1 LT About 20% of spawns were groups of 4 Minions, and 1 Boss About 10% of spawns were groups of 10 minions About 10% of spawns were groups of 3 Minions, and 3 LT's About 10% of spawns were groups of 4 Minions, 1 LT, and 1 Boss (the last group) Using these as data points, an average mission may look like this: 10 groups of enemies 8 sec of downtime in between groups Every 3rd group is +1 level, making them 10% tougher in both damage taken and hit chance. The +1 groups are split between an ST focused boss spawn, a balanced spawn, and a very minion-heavy spawn. Groups have various makeups based on my observation where some have smaller numbers but higher ranks, and vice versa. I tried to balance the encounters to have a bit of variety from group to group not to favor AoE or ST. Some groups have tons of minions that big AoEs will help against, while others have fewer, harder targets that ST attacks will likely help with. That said, this is still a lot of enemies per group, so if we want to give an ST test we can add an 11th round with an Elite Boss spawn: The final round gives a target for the more ST oriented sets to have a better data point as well, and I feel EB's are common enough in story-arc / TF gameplay to be a valid round in the test. My hope is that this could emulate a normal mission, and the goal will be to clear the groups as efficiently as possible which will test AoE and ST damage throughout the run. We have a +End power in play from WP, and in between groups the character should be able to recover 20.4 Endurance. For a benchmark on endurance management, how about we ad a caveat that the character should be able to move to the next group with over 40 endurance to use? They will need to wait to recover that much endurance (about 16 sec if they are at 0) before moving to the next group. Misses should be about 5% of the time, or 1 in 20 attacks. That would be a bit iffy to figure out... so maybe just reduce damage by 5%? A bit higher vs the +1's.... Using Scrappers as a base, they have 5% crit chance on minions, and 10% on LT's+. Over time this could be rounded out to 5% and 10% damage buffs respectively, canceling out the acc penalty over time on minions and providing a 5% boost on the LT's+. Any noticeable changes to Accuracy and/or Criticals would need to be noted (else we elect to avoid crits). Thoughts?

Power creep is bad because it makes everything else snowball in the long term. Everything gets better, the game gets easier and more stale, the game is adjusted with new challenges fitting for the new stuff, old stuff is left behind (on live this was more due to time investment of going back to old sets vs making new shinies for getting new customers / cash shop), rinse repeat. If we wanna talk support / controllers, look at Dark Control or Time Manip / Nature vs older sets. Its clear that those sets are a cut above most others in their class, I mean Time Manip can invalidate FF as a set with 1 power that also affects the character using it. This is from raw Defense, but also on top of everything else Time gives. Or even say, how Water Blast has been amazing out of the gate, etc. Back to the topic at hand though, lets say that we do find that TW is over performing by X value. Instead of toning TW down by X value, we instead boost all other sets up to be within that margin. This is not only a lot more work to do, but it comes with two problems: How do we boost the sets by X? A raw damage buff will go against the design philosophy where damage is tied to recharge primarily. If we just flat out make other melees hit harder but recharge slower that may be a lot of jank. If we manage to boost all sets by X to close the gap, it does not fix the true under performers as they usually have fundamental flaws with them, so they will need 2 rounds of tweaks between the "universal melee boost" and "underperformer revamp". I'd love to revamp older / worse off sets. But, it is a ton of work to do that and its just complex with all the other interactions in the game... vs potentially tweaking one set.

I feel like the genie is out of the bottle with IO's though. I mentioned it earlier, but I think it would be fascinating to get data on IO use like we did AT stats, would be an interesting metric to see how common it is.

I do feel that is part of the problem. Back in the day, the content was designed for support to be needed to boost the non supports as a feedback loop. You needed to debuff the enemy, then buff the damage dealers to take them down. Now that it isn't necessary, the supports are still at the same relative strength... but that is a massive can of worms

Going High end is great because its fun, and you push the meta. But like... being the only thing to hit 40% more than everything else gets suspect even if a few people are reporting it. On top of the metric of TW/Bio being very popular on Scrappers despite it not necessarily being the thematic pairing you'd expect to be popular like Claws/Regen, Inv/SS, and such. We really don't have much data on the basic performance of the melee sets outside of high-end builds people gravitate towards The thread has given me a lot of feedback both ways depending on the build that TW has massive swings in performance which makes me think more and more it's a catalyst for over performance rather than an over performer itself, though there is something at work when even among the top performers it has amazing results. But as mentioned, Psy and Rad don't have many data points either.... I really think we need some way to look at a gambit of tests to compare sets in different areas at a basic level to get a good feel for how they perform in general. IOs / etc would just be outside sources and are too varied to consider without getting the baselines IMO.

I mean yeah, lets just go full Syndrome. But it does seem your comment was directed at melee sets, and even if WM by itself is #5 out of *everything* that is still impressive.

What is WM under? Anyways, circling way back I feel Steampunkette had a good idea on page 1 where a side-grade would be nice. Something that, while it curtails TW's high end performance, makes it a bit easier to use or better on the low end.

This is really just a battle of semantics here. Optimizing attack chains is what *everyone* does, not just Scrappers. What I was trying to point out is that Scrappers don't have anything truly unique about them like a Fury Bar, Domination, the ability to set up guaranteed crits and so on that fundamentally change how you would approach an encounter based on your AT choice. Individual power sets / powers can change that, but those are shared among at least 3 other AT's with Scrappers too. TW has the 1st swing of a battle start slow, but the next 4 are very fast and generally cut the time it takes to finish an encounter down substantially. I agree, it blows if your momentum starter misses but more often than not it doesn't. Similar to how it sucks when Follow Up misses on claws and you don't get a damage boost for a whole rotation, at least with TW you can use any other attack to re-attempt. I guess this opens up the question of what is traded for what lvl of Recharge, and in what scenarios. Hasten, a secondary that perhaps give +Rech (handful of these exist), very minor IO slotting for like +10-15% rech, or even being on the same team as somebody with AM or /Time, etc. TW is a very extreme set by design, and the more I am talking about it in this thread the more I think it is a catalyst. Most sets when you add buffs just get proportionally better. TW on the other hand gets exponentially better as the weaknesses are removed or the momentum mechanic is enhanced further. Claws/EA is fun as hell, my Scrapper is that too! 😄 I've also had a lvl 50 TW/Fire on live, a lvl 50 tw/wp and a lvl 22 tw/rad now on HC. Claws is a great set that does different things than TW does, its almost like the opposite of it really. The problem for me personally is going to sets that are similar to TW such as War Mace, Broad Sword, Super Strength, etc where you are wielding a weapon or using your might to fight enemies. The latter examples just don't offer the same results even though they can be paired with /shield, and other "mighty" sets don't offer the same utility or big sweeping hits. Sets like Savage or Staff are both new, and offer vastly different secondary effects than TW to make them stand out, but there are a slew of others that offer some of the same effects and theme that are hit a bit harder thematically and mechanically. The only data we have now is how TW is incredibly popular based on the AT datamines, and how it tops the charts of several damage threads. I would love to gather data on it and the other melee sets outside of such niches to get a feel for what the "intended" performance should be, and then we can even use that as a metric to help the other sets as well.

1) That is fair. It is sort of double edged as personal experience is good for you know... actually have experience with whatever subject matter, but at the same time it is subjective and hard to quantify. Your experience so far has been that TW is clunky and not to your tastes, so you find it to be underwhelming while I find it to be incredibly powerful to where it soured other sets going back to them. The truth is probably in the middle. 2) It doesn't indict TW by itself, but currently it does as TW does have +Damage to it that goes outside of the normal design of powers historically, on top of modern design perks via non-direct damage mechanics. Until other sets catch up, it will have these facets over them. 3) Its sorta hyperbole, but say we equalized DPS across all melee sets. Suddenly, TW feels a bit disadvantaged since it has endurance and learning curve issues compared to other sets that deal the same damage over an encounter. TW needs to deal more damage than average given it's mechanic, and it's whole theme of bonking people with a railroad sign. Its just that currently, it seems a smidge overtuned to where it should have been in relation to other sets. The attacks are already coded the same as other heavy-hitter attacks in other sets so they deal great base damage, and ideally you will deal that quickly about 80% of the time in combat. Unlike the same heavy hitter attacks in other sets though, TW gets a bit extra damage per power than if it were another set if that makes sense.

I do have a scrapper with both ATO's, but it doesn't fundamentally change how I play him aside from occasionally swapping targets if I proc the +Crit and the enemy I was fighting dies quicker. Scrappers don't have anything extra to aim for when playing such as setting up for a critical hit, controlling an enemy first to deal double damage, or maintaining a fury bar for max output. That's what I refer to with mini-games, things you strive for outside the main game of "fighting enemies" or at least things you do at the same time while fighting enemies. The sources I have personally linked earlier are just raw DPS charts based on added recharge, which in today's game is not that hard to achieve either solo through IOs (more investment) or in a team setting with many support sets and incarnate abilities giving rech buffs. They also only focus on the primaries without secondaries added in, so yes it is theoretical but it should not be hard to achieve in-game. Its not just Pylon threads, its personal experience with the set and how playing it sours other melee sets when I want to try them out. Even if/when they get buffs, TW staying the same has a ton of appeal with boosted melee range/AoE Size, plentiful secondary effects, and huge damage over other sets to where it still has edges over them. Part of this is just updated set design, where older sets just have flaws that are baked into them that would require substantial reworks to be brought up to par, but if they were to go up to TW's level it will either A) be ridiculous in it's own right or B) ironically, cause TW to suffer as it has drawbacks that X set does not have and thus needs buffs (which continues the cycle). Given that "The game is balanced on SO's" is tossed around so much, I am trying to put together a way that the primaries can be compared at that level with no / minimal IO (something like a performance shifter or a single LOTG in combat jumping) usage, and in different scenarios beyond a controlled punching bag or farm environment such as under the effects of common ally buffs, quantifying secondary effects (how long an enemy is likely to be knocked down, or w/e), and so on. Hopefully this can shed light on sets that need love as well, which I agree is a better thing to focus on. But I just cannot help that unless we have a solid benchmark that TW is part of and not above, it will always be part of the convo / a point of contention.

That is not inherit to Scrappers, other ATs can get those same sets and mechanics. What I mean is stuff like Fury and Assasination, or even Bruising / Opportunity. Also, this is not a troll thread. I'm of the opinion that TW stands out from the other melee sets to a degree that is not seen among other sets. Reigning it back a bit to still be a top tier set and boosting others to similarly be within the range of performance would be healthy for the game. Unfortunately it's hard to test anything aside from Pylons as we dont have any good punching bags to test with reliably aside from anecdotes or clear times on specific maps, which bring other variables. Most of the last few pages have been discussing alternate testing methods to get better data on TW's, as well as other set performances.

It is weird yeah, but that would be a super change to a lot of stalker sets. In general though, Scrappers currently get more AoE power.

The difference with Stalker and Scrapper crits tho is that Scrappers get way more AoEs on average, so that can be tricky. Hell, imagine TW with 33% crit rate 😛

This is tricky. On the one hand, as Steampunkette points out it may be more likely for people to do douchey stuff if there were female minions than with male / unknown gender minions. There will inevitably be someone who does goofy stuff with these minions whether it be sexist, or just odd with the clone or further custom ability. On the other hand, it would be really nice to have more options to fulfill a lot of player creativity. On top of this, while it's sort of a strawman... there already exists ways to report and control people who do bad things in game, and there are already methods to do such bad things using existing customization.

Scrappers are neat in that they are sort of the "mario" AT. However, this means they have no standout attribute or fun minigame to play, though certain sets absolutely shine on them over other Melees, just how other sets shine on stalkers, brutes or tanks. That is sort of a seperate thread, though I would like to see some sort of crit system or the like that Stalkers get in team / combo environments (I always get wonderfully surprised by their crits on controlled targets). On a thread related note, is there anywhere that lists the basic HP of enemies at lvl 50? As well as their regen rates / etc? The last comparison I ran had both TW and WM do tons of damage, but I wonder what targets would have even lived vs it lol. If TW runs out of gas at 32 sec of constant use, but can kill stuff in 10 sec, then the downtime between kills makes up for the endurance.

I do think EM nerfs were a fiasco of inexperience. The sets were sort of copy-paste between the ATs, so nerfing the set just had a wide reaching effect.

Stalkers bring amazing burst damage and can eliminate key threats faster than any other AT 90% of the time, and if they choose have light CC and debuffing from Assassinations. Tankers and Brutes bring aggro management to corral enemies and keep the team safer by directing incoming damage to them. With the upcoming Tanker changes, they can clear up riff raff well enough while doing this as well. Scrappers are between these where they do very solid damage and can hold their own compared to blasters which can go down easy if the player is not aware of themselves. They are also great for Solo and small teams. As Infinitum put it, they're sort of like melee blasters along with Stalkers where they trade amazing ST for more AoE, and some defenses for more Damage than brutes and tanks. So their role on a team is damage, not quite at blaster level but at the same time they are much much much sturdier out of the gate allowing them more freedom in a lot of scenarios. Also yes, all TW attacks can critical hit on scrappers which may inflate the problem higher on them. Averaged out over time, it's like a 7% damage boost vs general content. But in the moment, it can be like a 1000damage hit.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. How are melee sets falling behind exactly? What measurement are we using here? What we are measuring is 1 melee set vs the rest of the melee sets in terms of performance. Measuring "support" is very nebulous unless you have some parameters.

Doesn't illusion control already make female phantoms? Another thing with the clone pets that could be concerning, if you have a costume slot that is female, then after summoning you change costumes to a male is that not the same problem?

If other sets are buffed, TW would still be above them is the whole point. Buffing other sets to match TW would make them bonkers. Ideally this would be like a ~15% downward tun on TW's high end performance, and then a 30% boost to multiple other sets.