Parabola

I've been having a look at Touch of Fear over on Brainstorm trying to figure out the best proc slotting for it. I figured this would be as good a place as any to post what I've found as I've been doing all my testing on a tank and with the radius bonus they get the best version of the power (Dark Melee on tanks is in a great place right now). I ran some slightly unscientific aoe tests by jumping into a big spawn, spamming ToF and then trying to decipher the logs. This was a bit of a pain. ToF delivers 5 ticks of negative damage per target which really clutters up the logs and I still haven't worked out an easy way of exporting them. You also have to contend with variable numbers of enemies within the aoe radius and misses confusing things. But I did get one pretty clear result - the pbaoe procs show up way more than the fear or to-hit debuff procs. This I believe is because both the fear and to-hit debuff effects apply only to the main target of the attack and it's only the damage component that is aoe. Therefore any procs from a fear, to-hit debuff or accurate to-hit debuff set will only proc on the primary target of the attack and will never apply to anyone else caught in the aoe. So this makes the pbaoe procs by far the most useful for aoe damage. The Perfect Zinger proc fired approximately as often as the pbaoe procs on my tank, I'm assuming it would be the same with a brute but you know what they say about assumptions... The Fury of the Gladiator proc also behaved like the rest of the pbaoe procs. But I then got to wondering if the fear and to-hit debuff procs calculate their proc chances as if ToF were a single target power or whether they share the aoe proc chance. Plugging a 6' radius into the proc equation gives us a 35% proc chance for a 3.5ppm proc using no recharge slotting (this is the value Mids shows). If the power were being treated as a single target power the proc chance would rise to 58%. That looked to me like a difference that I should be able to see with some degree of certainty. So I slotted up ToF with the Eradication, Obliteration, Scirrocco's, Glimpse of the Abyss and Cloud Senses procs and went and whacked a pylon for a bit. The results showed that I was getting a proc rate that looked a lot more like the single target 58% than the aoe 35% (in fact I was seeing a bit higher than that but this is from limited data). The really interesting bit though is that I was seeing this for all the procs not just the non pbaoe ones. There seemed to be no difference between the proc rates of the different types. So it looks like ToF might be calculating its proc chances against the main target as if it were a single target power, even for procs belonging to the aoe damage effect. This is hardly likely to change the main focus of the power but it would be a nice little bonus! Based on all this I'm thinking of using the following slotting: Scirocco's Dervish - Acc/Dam/End Scirocco's Dervish - Lethal proc Obliteration - Dam Obliteration - Smashing proc Eradication - Energy proc Perfect Zinger - Psi proc I've got enough global accuracy to get away with very little slotted directly into the power so ymmv on that. I will likely +5 the Acc/Dam/End piece as the 2 slot bonus from Scirocco's is largely forgettable, the s/l res from Obliteration has some use when exemping though. With no external damage buffs this gives the power an average of 176.7 damage for each target hit in the aoe effect. If I'm right about the different proc chance for the main target this will rise to an average of 243.9 for that lucky recipient, in addition to the fear and to-hit debuff. Edited to add: Just ran a couple of extra tests with the above slotting for single target. I wanted to make sure that the higher proc rates maintained when there were no fear or to-hit debuff procs in the power, just in case something really weird was happening. But it's fine, for a single target the above slotting still achieves a 58% proc rate. That result is looking more and more reliable so I'm almost certain that is what is going on. Touch of Fear is an interesting power!

If you're taking barrier and melee then you are leaving a lot of damage on the table (both directly and in the form of recharge and endurance to use heavier attacks more often). Of course each individual build will need to see what it needs to supplement with incarnates for it's best performance. Which was my point in the first place - comparing mirrored builds is pointless, they should each be built to their individual strengths and weaknesses.

With outside buffs or in a farm yes. In general play even combining and chewing down reds a brute will very rarely see the cap. And I'm sorry but brutes cannot hit tank levels of survivability. Even if they hit the same def caps they will be behind in res and hp. The tanker +res proc on it's own makes a huge difference.

Was just coming here to say exactly this. Comparing mirrored builds isn't proving anything; there is a point beyond which more survivability is superfluous but there is no practical limit to the usefulness of more damage. When both AT's are built to a practical level of survivability tanks have much more freedom to explore things like heavy proc slotting. This closes the gap in favour of tanks while still allowing them to be tougher.

I couldn't tell you where I got this from, I may have misunderstood what I was reading! As you say they certainly don't stack from multiple applications so if they are resisted there seems little point to them overall.

Was going to reply the other day to say this thread has inspired me to roll a fire/ma tank and I'm enjoying him immensely. It's a great combo mechanically but probably the best thing is how stylish it is. Kicking people while wreathed in flames does not get old. Interesting results in your recent posts with the procs vs recharge slotting and the interface stuff. As you say coh is difficult to test with any degree of accuracy due to the randomness built in. I also completely agree that we do tend to focus on what works against a pylon to the exclusion of the 'real' game simply because they are easy to test against. One thing about these -res proc results though, I thought they caused the target to cast a -res effect on themselves which bypassed resistance? Is that an outdated understanding of the mechanics?

Well, stalkers don't get battle axe so that narrows the field! In terms of pure mechanics shield is better on a scrapper or a tank than a brute (+dam acting on higher melee modifier rather than getting drowned out by fury). Tanks are really very tough with shield but it is also a great set on scrappers where you still get a taunt aura and it's simple enough to hit softcaps to all positions. I'd go scrapper I think.

I've been playing around with a build for one of these. Bit pricey but it does look like quite a tanky blapper. Softcaps to s/l/e/r and drain psyche close to perma. I took tactics almost entirely to help drain psyche to hit (because I needed that ranged defence bonus from it) but it will also boost the damage of psi lance.

So Dual Wield, Suppressive Fire and Executioners Shot are all listed as having the same cast time - 1.67s (1.848s Arcanatime). But that's clearly not right, right? Just eyeballing them Executioners Shot seems to take longer than Dual Wield which seems to take longer than Suppressive Fire. I'm not sure Executioners Shot is actually any quicker than Piercing Rounds (2.5s / 2.64s). Is this just my eyes deceiving me?

One idea that has been floated around before is for contacts to auto exemp you to the maximum level of their missions. Then you could go up to any contact in the game and get missions from them as long as you met their minimum level. You'd also never be in danger of outlevelling a contact half way through their stuff.

Well according to many here there isn't a problem so I'm not exploiting anything. I'm less sure, hence the guilt!

What the original devs were in the middle of doing with ppm is irrelevant. The entire game was in the ongoing process of development, that is the nature of an mmo. Any changes they made to ppm would have been monitored and further refined/reworked down the line as the impact of changes in the complex game ecosystem became apparent. The homecoming devs have stated they want to run it 'as live'. That is going to mean continuing the process of making changes to game mechanisms based on the way things are working now not what they were before. I'm sure there are other servers taking the shutdown state of the game as some kind of gospel, but this is an inherently flawed premise as it only entered a steady state when the plug was pulled and changes made just prior to this hadn't had time to bed in. Even changes made a huge length of time before shutdown can't be regarded as 'the way things are supposed to be'. I'm sure the original devs weren't content with how energy melee was functioning, or regeneration (nerf regen), and the last changes to those sets were back in the stone age. I imagine they would have come to the same conclusions that the homecoming team did about titan weapons too given more time to see how it was performing. And even if the current ppm state of play is everything that the original devs had hoped it would turn out to be, it still wouldn't make the slightest difference now. The homecoming devs are running the game and are having to make their own judgements about all this. They might not feel there is an issue to be adressed here, or possibly that any issue is too difficult or too disruptive to fix. Until we have word either way I will continue to abuse the current ppm system with a certain amount of guilty pleasure. It's fun but it doesn't seem quite right to me.

I play lower levels mostly. I have some incarnate monsters but they don't get played much. I forced myself to make a 'main' at one point and got a load of badges on him but I realised I was playing him because I felt I should rather than wanting to. He's been sat idle apart from the odd bout of marketeering ever since. If the lv50 game played a bit more like lower levels then I'd play more at that level. As it stands it feels like a different game that is less fun. It's not just the balance problems, I prefer the lower level themes and storylines too. Drug dealing gangs and mad doctors I can buy into, interdimensional alternate reality woo woo less so. I power levelled a couple of characters for the novelty as much as anything. I then promptly deleted them and levelled the normal way. It just didn't feel right, the journey is the game for me and an instant 50 feels hollow and soulless. What I particularly can't understand is powerlevelling in other people's farms. At least make your own farmer on a second account and do it yourself. It's boring enough even then but at least it's you pressing the buttons.

Yes everyone does indeed get the same bonuses for things like defence and resistance. I don't think a scrapper can get that close to a tanker in mitigation terms though, they will always have less hp and lower resistance caps regardless of slotting. Purely on defence numbers they can close the gap but they will generally have less DDR to protect that defence. But damage output is much more one dimensional, you only have more or less of it and the caps that are there aren't often hit in regular play (and procs also get around that cap). It seems to me a tank can approach much closer to a scrapper in damage terms than a scrapper can approach a tank in damage mitigation. Yes, very true. Brutes would need it to work slightly differently. If procs were also affected by +dam it would sort out a couple of anomalies like SS characters being able to use procs to ignore the rage crash (from an offensive point of view)...

You make some good points here and I see where you are coming from. However as I see it all other set bonuses can only work within the boundaries of AT modifiers and caps. Procs are the exception in that they ignore modifiers and are flat damage amounts for everyone. This is where it gets sticky in terms of AT balance. Blasters have a much higher ranged damage modifier than defenders. No amount of slotting with recharge, defence or even damage can get around this. You can build a defender who does more damage, in greater safety, than they did before but spend the same on a blaster and they will still do handily more damage. Procs though ignore the modifiers and now a defender can leverage their greater survivability base to circumvent their poor damage mod and catch up with the blaster in a way that no other slotting allows. It's true that you have to build specifically for it and sacrifice other areas, but the AT's that have been specifically under the microscope here are particularly well suited to that process. Defenders because of self buffs, debuffs and high self support modifiers, and tanks because they are so damn tough they can function without slotting for it. Now I don't think a defender can surpass a blaster in damage output as a general rule but they can close the gap. The AT that really loses out is corruptors who are squeezed from both sides and I feel are struggling for their place in the game. The same is true on the melee side, I don't think anyone would argue that tanks with procs can routinely outdamage scrappers but they are certainly putting the squeeze on brutes to my mind. Maybe the answer is obvious: make damage procs follow AT damage modifiers. I wouldn't like it, I enjoy the hell out my proc monster builds (who doesn't like building tankmages?), but I am uncomfortable with the overall game balance and see procs as being part of the problem. Are you suggesting that proc damage might ignore target resistance whether that be positive or negative? One of the further ways defenders get to leverage procs is with handy sources of -res. They don't need to be fighting a highly resistant enemy to gain the benefit of that. I think this is what you are saying? As things stand there might be mileage in this (as you say the heavily resistant enemies would skew performance though), but if procs followed AT mods then I think there would be less need overall. @Galaxy Brain, I know you've felt this thread has been dragged off topic but it seems to me that it's difficult to seperate the 'what IO's allow us to do' from the 'should we balance around IO's'. One of the arguments for toughening up parts of the game is to make fights last longer and give support players more to do. One root cause of this is the blizzard of damage that is output by everyone at high levels including some suport players! The discussion around procs feeds directly into this to my mind.

It's also the higher modifiers defenders get on pool powers. Between that and higher mods on buffs and debuffs they need to spend far fewer slots on full sets for survival. Much the same thing is true in the tanks vs brutes comparison. Tanks and defenders are much more free to stuff their attacks with procs and it makes a big difference.

Everthing is viable but I'd go defender with these powersets. Sonic is flat out better on a defender due to higher -res and dark miasma is a good set on either AT but again the debuffs are bigger on a defender. This is a fun combo, you output a huge amount of debuff and control as you grind enemies into the ground.

I'm sure you are right. I'm not really an end game player for reasons I've gone on about at length in game balance discussions so I always view incarnates as add ons rather than fundamental pieces of build functionality. If I can't make a build function to my satisfaction at all levels I tend not to play it. Sometimes that means making choices that are likely suboptimal from an incarnated lv50 point of view but that's a price I'm willing to pay. This is where the point about individual building style comes in. We all have our own priorities which makes giving general build advice very difficult.

Others have covered some of the individual areas to look at above. My advice on top of that would be look at lots of other people's builds and try to work out what they were trying to achieve and how they went about it. After a while you will develop your own set of priorities and a style of putting a build together, I never use someone else's build but I do find useful ideas in them that I then apply to my own. One thing probably worth mentioning is that while building for recharge and defence it can be easy to forget about endurance management. I've seen plenty of builds that have really impressive numbers until I've realised they were totally unsustainable (or at least would be if I tried to play them). Again though only experience can tell you what numbers you will want to shoot for. As a general rule of thumb I want at least 2eps net gain before endurance procs like performance shifter or panacea are factored in but that will vary depending on powersets.

After trying doms a few times I've found I just don't really get on with them. It's the bits and pieces format of the assault sets mostly. What are we supposed to do with all those fairly samey single target attacks? Why do the aoe options have to not play nicely together? Does everything have to be a click power? I've been wondering if branching power choices could be put to good use in assault sets. Allow the player to pick a more coherent set of melee or ranged powers. Add in more utility picks like toggles to reduce the reliance on click powers. Maybe shuffle some powers down from the epic pools to make doms a bit more user friendly at low levels.

We've got a thread on game balance and now this one on the market. We just need someone to open a new one demanding the removal of the aggro cap and we can melt the forums.

Fun is of course subjective. One person may find facerolling enemies fun, the next may desire some more challenge. One may not mind their contribution to a team becoming negligible, the next may become bored and frustrated. I certainly haven't suggested anywhere that I think the game should become a remorseless grind. I feel there is a huge amount of middle ground between faceroll and grind that can be explored. As I see it the problem with where we are now is that we are maxed out at one end of the difficulty slider. A team that wants less challenge at high levels has the ability to turn it down (I can't seriously imagine any lv50 team currently running at -1). But a team wanting more challenge can't go any higher that 4/8, which is effectively 3/8 to incarnates and often easily soloable. And the people in charge have already said that they are looking at this. I'm sure they will be trying to find a balance that is fun for everyone.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Far too much of this debate is being conducted with defensiveness bordering on hostility and it's refreshing to see a more balanced perspective. Of course you are absolutely right, people play both solo and in teams for all sorts of reasons. No changes to the game are going to please everyone and trying to see how best to manage the game for it's overall health is difficult to say the least. I know how I see it but equally well appreciate that others don't see it the same way. And of course I could well be completely wrong too! Just to clarify, when I talk about clipping soloability I am only talking about soloing at the highest difficulty levels. I still would like to wade into a x8 spawn and wreck it solo but it's being able to do that at +4 that strikes me as the issue. It's having nowhere to go with the difficulty slider when a team faces content individual members can solo that feels wrong to me. I enjoy soloing and 'soloing all the things' as I said before but feel that if I had to solo on say 2/8 instead of 4/8 it might be better for the overall game.

Ok fair enough the 'solo all things' statement was a generalisation and I apologise for that. It does rather accurately sum up how I end up approaching soloing a lot of the time and you do see a fair bit of it around on the forums too though. The 'so be it' part was only talking about myself, I'm not naïve enough to imagine everyone would be fine with it, in the same way that I will not be fine with it if things are left entirely as they are. Your last paragraph is interesting. It is the 'demolish everything in 3 minutes or less' builds that are exactly the issue I am talking about. If somebody brings a build that can solo at 4/8 to a team they are inevitably going to have a big impact on how that team feels for the other players. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in finding that nearly every lv50 team has at least one or two of those builds in it. You may not play those builds but you have clearly come across them and it seems to have affected your teaming experience as you have chosen to solo instead. As I said before I'm not arguing for an end to soloing or enforced teaming. But I am suggesting that the ability to solo at maximum difficulty is a problem for the teaming game. I'm not thinking we should be reduced to only soloing at 0/1 but in some way we need somewhere to go with the difficulty headroom so that teams can take on challenge that can't just be met by one or two members of the team alone. This could be done by adding extra difficulty options or it could be done by targeted rebalancing (or both) but in my opinion something should be done.

This right here is where there is a huge difference in perception driving the two sides of this argument. People who view the game as primarily a solo game with an option for teaming are of course not going to be all that concerned about balance issues affecting teaming. They just want to be able to 'solo all the things'. But those of us who see CoH as an mmo first and foremost and who view teaming as the bedrock of the game (or at least feel it should be), tend to be those expressing concerns about how the team experience is being affected by powercreep. And don't misunderstand me, I play at odd times and really value being able to solo well in this game, but as far as I'm concerned soloing absolutely shouldn't be the balancing point. If the soloability of my characters takes a hit in a balance pass so be it, in my opinion the game would be healthier as a result. No one is suggesting that soloing is removed as an option, just that if people can solo at maximum difficulty it doesn't leave much room for teaming.