Parabola

I don't see what is sneaky about a change being openly discussed in beta testing? And these changes have been well rationalized and aren't being pushed through, again they are being openly beta tested. Your disagreement with the changes doesn't make any of those things so. I'm sure your concerns have been well noted by now.

Worth highlighting this point. The game at the point of shutdown was still a game in development, and not just the things that were still in beta at that point. Continuous development and re-balancing are part of what make MMO's what they are. CoH is a very complicated ecosystem with many layers of systems interacting in all sorts of ways. No implementation of anything is ever going to be so perfectly balanced out of the gate that it won't require tweaking at a later date and even if something was perfect on it's own merits another change elsewhere in the system would eventually interact with it and create the need for changes. And honestly would we want it any other way? I don't remember the old forums being full of posts saying 'Ok devs, with I23 the game is perfect, take a permanent holiday and leave it well alone'.

I've had a couple of attempts at finding that sound to no avail. I've a hunch that it is using some environmental sound file but that's mainly a guess.

I agree, particularly about the aoe behaviour. Procs already have to contend with the area factor in aoes which is presumably supposed to even out their performance relative to single target powers. Clamping them to a single fire makes slotting them in an aoe worse than slotting in a single target power and will be a gotcha for the unwary player. The current behaviour of the sandman proc may be overpowered in long recharge aoes but isn't that an overall proc formula problem rather than something specific to these chance for heal procs? Either way clamping to a single fire doesn't seem like the right solution.

AT modifiers are part of the fundamental ruleset of the game. In my opinion it is absolutely correct that these should be applied consistently. The devs have already demonstrated their willingness to try to buff underperforming sets so I imagine that if any set or power is deemed to be underperforming across the AT's after these modifiers are applied it will then be buffed. Indeed if an individual AT is decided to need one of it's modifiers changing then I imagine that too would be on the table. But to get to that point the powers should be functioning consistently in the first place.

I'm not sure I'm following the reasoning here? These are the same flippers that buy things and then relist them at higher prices right?

Eh, you're probably right. I certainly don't have empirical evidence either way, it's just my feel of the situation. I've found myself not rolling corruptors on homecoming and either going defender or blaster. Corruptors feel a bit squeezed out but that might just be me getting carried away with what I think proc builds can achieve vs what they actually do. My most successful proc build has actually been a rad/stone tank using ff+rech procs everywhere to fuel the long recharge aoes. He's not the best tank in the world but he does quite a bit of damage!

Sure, it's a matter of perception. If you are completely happy with the balance of the high level game then I doubt anything I say about it will change that. I consider the current balance between defenders and corruptors a problem in the same way that I consider the whole balance of the incarnate game a problem but that is just the way I see it. Blasters and scrappers are damage AT's so giving them more damage isn't paradigm changing. Dominators were in pretty bad shape as an AT and had a radical rework - the damage scale increase was in effect damage taken out of domination. And as you say the defender change only affects solo play - they weren't able to solo effectively enough and so had a very targeted buff. I agree that all these buffs improved the game but none of them are the equivalent in my mind to the current situation with procs buffing the damage of low damage AT's. I'd like to add that I too enjoy being able to build in interesting ways. I've commented on a beta thread recently that it's a shame that defence and recharge are the only things worth building for. I would like to see other bonuses be given a once over to see if they can be made more appealing - it would be great to be able to build significantly for resists, damage, regen, max hp etc. Whatever changes are made to them procs should remain valuable additions to a build, but they shouldn't be allowed to upset AT balance.

There are probably better and more complete answers to this but to my mind the reason this should be done is that the damage modifier is a fundamental point of balance between AT's. Defenders should do less damage than corruptors but procs are ignoring these modifiers. Worse still (for corruptors) due to defenders higher buff modifiers they are actually easier to build into high functioning proc monsters. I've used defenders and corruptors as they seem the clearest example but it affects other AT's too. The problem of damage output being the only important metric in the high level game is a wider problem (argued about discussed at length elsewhere) and not one that can be solved by throwing extra damage at low damage AT's.

Impressive stuff Alouu. I'm sure I understood some of it! I can't really comment on the maths of all this but I certainly agree that something needs to be done with PPM. My only thought is that at the same time as adjusting the formula to tame the performance of damage procs there really should be a balance pass over the buff/debuff/mez procs. Many of these are currently completely worthless not because of how often or not they trigger (although true in some cases) but because their effects are too minor, low magnitude or flat out counterproductive (who wants to add a chance for knockback to a stun?). It would also be great if the same set of changes also addressed the behaviour of powers that currently do not proc at all or exhibit strange proc behaviour. I'm thinking things like seeker drones not proccing anything (as far as I am aware) or rain powers being very unreliable indeed. If these changes arrived as a package with the PPM change it might sweeten the pill a little!

Being a contrary sort I often use the arrival of a new powerset to play things that will benefit from having that powerset around rather than play the powerset itself. As we are probably going to be awash with new defenders and controllers when this hits live it might be the time for me to pick up a blaster or a tank. Something end heavy would seem appropriate to get full benefit.

Would the proc system be helped if each proc had two PPM values - one that took effect when it was slotted in an aoe and another for single target? No idea whether that's even possible of course but might allow for a bit of fine tuning?

RIP Broadside I guess! I'll reiterate what I said before about Artillery though; I think it could use more range at the expense of recharge. As it stands it doesn't compete with 5 Positron's Blast with a Range IO for the powers I was keen to use it in.

I'm actually very excited for Broadside (nee Shrapnel - not giving up!) as the combination of ranged defence and range enhancement creates a very attractive option for slotting into cones. Taoes are an interesting category of power in that they have two different types that work quite differently. I can't think of any other type of power that has this. Speaking of the range enhancement though ... I've just been having a look in mids at my usual slotting for a cone that needs range - 5 Positron's Blast and a Range IO. Post ED that gives 47.7% Acc, 99.08% Dmg, 47.7%End, 41.29% Range, 26.5% Rech. I'm wondering if we can get more range enhancement into Broadside sacrificing recharge possibly? As it stands unless I am desperate for that ranged defence and absolutely cannot get it from any other source I'll be sticking with my current slotting which would be a bit of a shame. Might also be an argument for it having a +range global bonus on top?

But as mentioned there aren't a huge number of sets that have both defence and recharge on them (and I suspect those that do exist like Obliteration are bad for the balance of the game). The ATO sets are complete outliers because they are pay to win purple sets, and only one of the regular purple sets has both (I like to think the dev that did that has the same soft spot for confuse powers that I do!). In general outside of these you are either slotting for recharge or defence but not both at the same time. It's a difficult balancing act. Taoe sets are predominantly going to be used on ranged characters where in general the most valuable defence bonus is ranged. In addition pretty much all characters chase global recharge (I've never seen a build that doesn't; even in the rare cases hasten isn't used global recharge is always useful). Therefore a set that has both ranged defence and recharge on it is simply going to be better than any other option is most cases. If Bombardment went live with 5% recharge and even 2.5% ranged defence I'd never slot Positrons Blast again, and any other new taoe set probably wouldn't get a look in either. They are trying to create more options where we a bit limited but the only way to do that is to create sets with roughly similar utility. That's why I kind of like the idea of ranged defence and range enhancement on Broadside (nee Shrapnel), the decent recharge bonus on Positron's Blast and a lower recharge bonus and some other flavour of defence on Bombardment. I'm pretty sure that s/l would be more useful to everyone including ranged characters than aoe so that might be one way of spicing Bombardment up a bit. Then we would have different options depending on what the build priority is with no obvious 'one set to rule them all'. At the risk of going on and on this is highlighting a problem with the whole IO system though. At present the only bonuses worth chasing are defence and recharge. I've tried various oddball builds from all out res capping to building for max hp and regeneration and nothing is even remotely as effective as piling on the defence and recharge. It is a bit sad that the first thought when starting a build isn't 'ok what do my powers provide and what interesting things can I build on', it's always simply 'more defence, more recharge'. Therefore this entire conversation is revolving around just these couple of bonuses and is seeming a little binary as a result. Some say defence + recharge = too powerful, some say defence or recharge on their own = not powerful enough...

But one of those is purple (and the only purple that has defence to my knowledge?) and another an ATO. As you say another is unique and it's not like you are ever going to be able to slot more than one snipe. I think it would be a shame to have only one new taoe set and for it be rendered unique to pump up the set bonuses. We're not exactly spoiled for choice with quality taoe sets at the minute.

I was thinking as in the volley of cannon fire from a ship - ranged but fairly close and spread out. Sounds kind of appropriate for cones.

I'm currently quite taken with Broadside but yours has more reasoning behind it.

Barrage and Broadside would also fit.

There is the rule of 5 problem if it ends up with the same values as thunderstrike though. Most builds I envisage slotting this set are also going to want to slot thunderstrike. I like either leaving it as a single 3.75 bonus or splitting it 3.13/0.625. Whatever bonuses are decided upon they are always going to benefit some AT's, some powersets and some builds more than others. The trick is just to try to provide a range of reasonably balanced options so people can make what they will of it. In my view a ranged s/l option would be a good thing because it doesn't exist at all at the minute and building for s/l defence on ranged characters is a thing. The only time I've ever built for aoe defence is on a melee softcapping all positions so I don't see that as being as useful. Ranged characters are more limited in how much defence they can pick up and the choices always seem to boil down to ranged or s/l. How about 'Cannonade' for the name of the new set?

Proposal B looks the most appealing but either is great. I would think about swapping the global +range bonus as well but that might just me being greedy! I quite like the ranged defence split. It certainly would help with the rule of 5 problem. Any build where I envisage using this set several times is going to be a ranged squishy of some sort and is going to be slotting several thunderstrike sets as well. 3.13/0.625 seems about right. Agree about the name. Something with the word 'extension' or 'reach' or similar in it? I can see some merit in s/l defence in bombardment. When I'm building any squishy they tend to go down one of two avenues. They are either ranged specialists and build hard for ranged defence or are taking an epic s/l shield and scrabble around to build on that. That often gets a bit ugly with muling kinetic combats in brawl and boxing because there aren't s/l options in ranged sets of any description. My blappers in particular would bite your hand off for a taoe set with both recharge and s/l defence in it (they don't need that +range global though ☺️).

Shrapnel as it stands seems to lack a bit of identity. I would love to see a set that was tooled up to be the go to set for cones which to my mind would have a combination of ranged defence, +range set bonus and range enhancement. As shrapnel already has the ranged defence and is a no proc set so there is plenty of enhancement to play with would this be a possibility?

Many of these suffer from the same issue. A primary with cone aoe (assault rifle, beam rifle, dark, sonic) is always going to be a difficult fit with a blapping secondary (elec, fire, ice to a certain extent). Interesting that sonic/tac arrow is on this list meaning that is the least popular sonic combo, I don't see why that should be the case. /elec looks like it could use more love.

And yet another alt was born...

A primary built around cone aoe and a blapping secondary sounds altogether like too much work. I like the theme though.