Parabola

Freeze ray every day of the week and twice on Sundays. The important metric is dpa (damage per activation) and freeze ray is streets ahead of bitter freeze ray.

Where Guassian's really shines is on positional defence melee builds; SR, Nin and Shield. Each of these is typically shooting for softcaps in all three vectors and that 6 slot bonus is a very efficient use of slots. A typical 6 slot positional defence bonus will be 3.75% working out at 0.75% defence per added slot (5 on top of the base slot), but if you are using all three vectors Guassian's is giving you 7.5% defence at 1.5% per slot. When I'm building a SR, Nin or Shield the first thing I do is stick Guassian's in the build up power.

You're not slotting the full guassians set for the recharge though 🙂

With a full guassians set slotted at lv50 you have 73.78% recharge. This loses you something like 1.8% from the chance for the proc to fire in a 90 sec base recharge build up type power ... It really isn't worth worrying about.

My take on this subject is that the ceiling of difficulty for regular play (non challenge conditions) is too low for the level of power available from the IO and Incarnate systems. This isn't a problem for solo play but I feel that the teaming game at high levels suffers as a result of this. There is a teaming dynamic that exists at lower levels which I consider to be the core gameplay experience of CoH and this evaporates when a team has several members who can happily solo at the settings the team is running. This is quite similar to an idea I posted a while back for enemy buffs that scale with level and team size to give more of a challenge to high level teams. I really like the sound of this! In reference to the comment at the end I would definitely consider retro fitting this to existing content (after seeing how it performs in the wild of course). We have a ton of content in this game and anything added to that is always going to only be a small percentage of the whole. New content clearly takes a long time to develop so it seems sensible and efficient to consider changes that can spice up what we have.

Well I've already demonstrated my 'happy to watch the world burn' credentials in this thread so why not! In all seriousness though I would totally get behind the limits on inspirations and particularly removing level shifts. In my anything but humble opinion level shifts were one of the worst thought out design decisions made by the original devs (alongside several other bad design decisions in the incarnate system). In a game with a fixed ceiling of enemy difficulty artificially lowering that ceiling while simultaneously adding powerful new abilities to characters was not a good idea. Apart from anything it just doesn't make me feel more super, just that all my enemies have suddenly had a hand tied behind their backs. I'm not sure ED on procs is the answer for proc balance though. For a start it wouldn't deal with those single procs like gaussian's that some regard as problematic and it also wouldn't address the disparities between what different powers and AT's get from procs. I think for this issue a more targetted case by case approach is probably needed.

I'm not sure why a name change would affect anything here? But the bigger issue is that the damage that confused critters do isn't counted against you or your team, this is a misconception. The only limitation on your ability to gain xp and drops is time, there are an infinite number of enemies. Therefore anything that helps chew through mobs quicker is a benefit, even if each mob is worth slighly less xp. As I said before we gain far more in kill rate than we lose from mobs damaging each other by using confuse powers. This has been proven but the perception that confuses are in some way detrimental seems hard to shift.

If a confused enemy defeats another without any other damage being dealt you get no xp for the kill. But if you do even a sliver of damage you (or the team) get rewards. My understanding is that the distribution is rather generous so if you do 10% damage you get a lot more than 10% rewards. And the confused enemies are upping the kill speed by harming each other. Way back on live clever people did all the maths and proved confuse powers are a net gain to xp and drops.

Just a note on recovery slotting. Blaster sustains have twice the base recovery that stamina has. A 50+5 end mod io in a sustain is worth way more than any proc you can put in any power for recovery. I haven't played a blaster yet that has needed more end slotting than two 50+5's in the sustain and health at the base slot with the panacea proc and stamina at the base slot with either a performance shifter proc or another 50+5 end mod (they work out about the same). So you can free up a couple of slots here for other things, if you have nothing else to do with them you could slot heals into the sustain as well to beef up the absorb.

All the above info is solid. It's also worth mentioning that while there is a lot of overlap in the debuffs being applied by the various sets, they often go about applying those debuffs differently. Rad for example delivers its debuffs in two toggles and a click. The toggles have longish cast times and hefty endurance costs but once applied leave you free to do other things, but only if you don't get mezzed. A set like cold is all clicks, this has the advantage that they don't drop if you get mezzed but recasting eats into your time. Poison has a decent chunk of its debuff in a self cast toggle, this is potentially up all the time without having to even choose a target but again mez can drop it. So there are things to consider about how each set plays and how that works for you beyond the raw debuff types. Best advice is to play a few and get a feel for what you like.

If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH,' the paint wouldn't even have time to dry. - Terry Pratchett

While this one is likely highly unpopular, it has some merit. It would be the best way to control power creep. It would eliminate the need for complicated ppm changes. Its very simple to both use and convey to players. I would personally hate this change but it would almost be worth it to see the absolute meltdown it would cause. No, in fact it would totally be worth it. Where do I sign?!

Yeah it's something I've suggested before. The AT's that generally benefit the most from procs tend to have low damage scalars and those that need to slot full sets for survivability tend to have high ones so there is an appeal to the idea it would balance things out a bit. Whether it would work in practice or not is anyone's guess though!

My take is that I enjoy both building for procs and more regular set based IO builds. I can certainly see the argument that certain powers are working too well with procs or are working in ways that weren't originally intended. I suspect that any dev action is more likely to focus on changes to individual powers rather than a sweeping change to the PPM system simply because of the impact of the latter. One thing I would really like to see addressed is the debuff and mez procs that are currently not serious contenders for a slot that can take a damage proc. Several of these are so underpowered they are essentially traps for the unwary player and others are just of very limited value. Many just need values buffing but a couple could do with being changed entirely. Top of this list for me would be the procs that add a random chance for knockback, a couple of times I've wanted to 6 slot the Stupify set for the ranged defence but I haven't been able to because it would break the power to have that proc in it.

I wouldn't be all that up for changing what levels different tiers of power are granted, that is part of the progression of the game and it changes dynamics between AT's that share powersets across primary and secondary. However, I do think there is always a case for looking at individual powersets and asking if the powers are laid out in the most appropriate way.

Well no other control set has a control power in the tier 9 slot rather than a pet. Therefore it seems reasonable to say that mind has mass confusion instead of a pet. Mind is an outlier set in many ways; no pet, no mass immobilize, extra single target attack and importantly no reliable means of setting containment. This makes direct comparisons against powers in other sets tricky other than to say mind as a whole lags behind and needs some love. I think you've misinterpreted my comment a little. I'm not being defensive about seeds or saying that mass confusion couldn't use a buff. But I am saying that even reducing mass confusions cooldown to match seeds isn't going to fix the set as a whole because mass confusion is in the tier 9 slot and mind control needs a reliable high availability control earlier than that. Yes, exactly. Powers should be compared against others that are designed to fulful the same role rather than happen to use the same effect. Seeds is very powerful when compared to other mid tier high availability control powers and maybe should be balanced accordingly.

I don't really think seeds and mass confusion are directly comparable powers. Sure, they are both confuses but seeds is in the 'high availability, bread and butter control' position and mass confusion is what mind control gets instead of a pet. Now seeds is a very good control and might indeed be overpowered but that needs to be determined by comparing it to powers fulfilling similar roles in others sets: stalagmites and flashfire for example. The most glaring problem mind control has is that it lacks a good option for use as a bread and butter control. A non-pulsing sleep doesn't cut the mustard nor does a fear. But adjusting mass confusion won't help this as it's in totally the wrong tier. That isn't to say mass confusion couldn't use a buff but how to balance it against pet powers is beyond me. So yes, seeds might be overpowered and mass confusion might be underpowered but they aren't in direct competition with each other and I wouldn't balance them as such.

In my head I know this as 'the fix for the luck charm problem'.

Not that you've said otherwise but just for clarity it's worth saying that the -tohit only affects the main target not everything in the aoe. The way they have built the new touch of fear is interesting. It is effectively two powers rolled into one. The first is a single target fear and -tohit and the second is a damage over time aoe that carries no debuffs. This helps to explain some of the proc behaviour but there are still some oddities like the fact it checks melee aoe procs using no area factor against the main target. Here's some analysis I did on the power a while back: On tanks? Absolutely. I now run my dark melee tanks (and I have 5 of them) with only shadow maul and touch of fear for aoe and they grind through +4×8 spawns just fine. It helps if you have something like a damage aura or a proc bomb from the armor set but it's not necessary. I've recently run a sr/dark with only those two powers for aoe and it did fine. I'm less convinced about touch of fear on other AT's though. Without the area bonus it really is a small aoe and they don't get much more damage out of it to compensate. All the recent tank and dark melee changes have combined to make the set really sing on this one AT. In fact I rate it as the best melee set available for tanks right now.

It is a thematic fit but it wouldn't benefit all powersets equally. Forcefields and empathy don't need any more reasons to not get picked... I am in the camp that thinks corruptors could do with something but I'm not sure this is it.

This used to be the case but they changed it back on live. The ddr in active defence now isn't affected by enhancements (mids is wrong). The power can be double stacked to get twice the ddr though. Not just a small budget in terms of inf but also in terms of slots. SR gives a ridiculous amount of freedom for the rest of your build. It makes a fantastic base for proc builds needing so little help from set bonuses to acheive it's potential.

No that's what I was saying. It's slightly less powerful but still good in my opinion. Mechanically it fills a niche as being the only all ranged manipulation set too. I had hoped that the inevitable rebalance was only going to hit esd arrow (which was clearly unbalanced vs controller mass holds) but the other changes are liveable with.

Damn I forgot arch/ta. Yeah that's my favourite matched pair. I27 took a little gloss off of it but I'm still a big fan. I can't think of another secondary I'd rather pair with archery and tac arrow works with many primaries but archery is a really good fit.

Fun topic. I too tend to avoid matched pairings though. Apart from the 'too obvious' thing it's funny how often matched pairs don't actually synergise as well as mixed pairings. Some other pairings like various flavours of fire/fire can suffer a bit from being too much of one good thing. Of the matched pairings I have played my dark/dark tank takes some beating (literally and figuratively).

Controllers I imagine.