America's Angel

1 merit = 3 converters. 3 converters = 210,000-300,000 inf on the market. So assuming 45s runtime. Plus 5s to get setup again. You'd be looking at 72 merits an hour from the ski slope. Which works out at 45,360,000-64,800,000 million per hour. Which works out at 750K-1mil inf per minute. Fire farming generates 1mil-1.8mil per minute. So this would still be slower, but a viable alternative, to farming. And objectively not minimal effort.

Yeah, there's three levels of play in CoH: Casual Intermediate Try-Hard Min/Maxer Try Hard Min/Maxers are your speed runner types who chain inspirations from their emails and uses the meta power combos to wipe stuff out quickly. You usually find them playing fire/fire blasters, fire/cold, fire/sonic corruptors, and an assortment of scrappers They use WASD and spacebar when fighting. They tend to speed missions. Intermediates are the vast majority of players with IO builds. They don't always play the meta sets. They don't chain inspirations. They don't always use WASD and the spacebar when fighting. They tend to do "kill all" when in missions. Casuals are everyone else. Now, in terms of optimal play, Casuals and Intermediates are largely indistinguishable. Which is why I lumped them together.

This just sounds like a description of a team of players of mixed ability levels and builds. If a casual player with a casual build joins a team of min/maxer tryhards, they're going to be left in the dirt. That's just haves vs have nots. That same player has the option of min/maxing their build and learning how to play optimally. So I don't see any issue here.

A few weeks before level 53 Hami Os were possible, I checked which level 53 Hami Os people were storing their inf on. Then I went and flooded all the OTHER level 53 Hami Os with 1 inf bids, to create the illusion that the majority of wealth was stored elsewhere. This made the niches I was targeting look much less desirable on patch day.

Top 10 Ranked 7/11/2021: 1 America’s Angel (+1) 2 Madvillain 3 T Mart 4 Alouu 5 Ridicc 6 Kencian 7 magecow 8 Blackhearted 9 mjb (+5) 10 Mushroom Ranks are calculated by Elo Score. Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZetLGnWhKXeE9o_5KG3ZI-rpdhde5YigzQlorIsOR4k/edit?usp=sharing Reasons for movement: We ran another Fightclub event tonight. Back on our home server of Indomitable! I brought my new Em/EA scrapper, Pink Guardian, out to play again. It went well, had some hard fights but managed to pull through like I did last week. Until I faced him. some tolerance. mjb's MA/Stone Brute. Seeing your beloved new toon kicked to death by a stone brute with lava feet... mjb went on to win the event. The second time he's done that. (And rocket back up the leaderboard back into the top 10!) Was a great time. Excited for next week! We've actually had a new influx of people to the Fightclub discord from Excelsior since our event last week. Going to have a think about organizing some mid-week stuff for them, too...watch this space. As always, if you're interested in seeing your name in the top 10, taking part in our weekly Sunday Fightclub events, or learning more about 1v1 melee fights, then feel free to join up to our discord, here: https://discord.gg/knq839NUM4

The PvP crowd is small, but dedicated. Best place to find out what's going on is the official PvP discord: https://discord.gg/vtXcKj9SAy If you're into melee vs melee fights, I run a discord here for that: https://discord.gg/gKwZKW7yZT

1 gold score = 1 merit

Have been playing around with a rad/dev blaster on beta. Have been throwing it up against +4/8 Rikti in a custom AE mission (Tyrant throne-room map) with the following builds: Softcapped with no procs Softcapped with 3xST attacks filled with -res and dam procs Softcapped with 3xAoE attacks filled with -res and dam procs No insps. No incarnates. So far, there's no significant clearspeed between the first two. The last one (AoE procs) was faster. I did an extra run with the AoE proc build with T4 incarnates slotted just for fun, and everything just melted. I didn't even need to use WASD and spacebar. I just spammed my powers and everything died. Incarnates made such a huge difference. I was genuinely shocked. The DPS jump from the level shift, Judgement (ion), Hybrid (assault doublehit), Interface (degen 25 -heal) , and alpha (musculature 45) is insane. The survivability jump from the level shift and Destiny (Clarion 2m) was insane. When I used Lore (Banished Pantheon untouchable), the spawns pretty much just instantly died. Haven't tested the first two builds with incarnates yet. Be interesting to see how they compare. Next stuff I'm going to test: Softcapped with no procs + incarnates Softcapped with 3xST attacks filled with -res and dam procs + incarnates All attacks procc'd out. As much +def as possible, but likely not softcapped. All attacks procc'd out. As much +def as possible, but likely not softcapped.+ incarnates All attacks procc'd out. As much +def as possible, but likely not softcapped. + incarnates + Inspirations I should probably switch to charged armour for the last three, but I'll keep Scorpion Shield just for consistency in testing. Hopefully this will help give some perspective of how procs intersect with the various OP elements in the game. And allow us to determine whether procs are overtuned, whether procs are undertuned, or whether procs seem overtuned only when paired specific things. (Incarnates/Inspirations being the two I want to test the most.) Once I've played around a bit more & fine-tuned, I'll post up the mids files for the builds, the # of the AE map, and videos of each of the runs. My hope with this is to create a framework that others can use to test different powersets. Rad/dev should overperform with procs. (This is why I picked it- the primary can slot all the -res procs, a multitude of damage procs, and the secondary has targeting drone it it so with that + tactics I don't have to slot for acc.) It's not a perfect test by any stretch of the imagination. And it cannot be applied outside of fighting Rikti, with a rad/dev blaster, with a specific build. But hopefully it will show us a pattern that we can then try and replicate elsewhere, with different sets, with different builds, versus different enemies.

The animation is great.

It seems reportable. But the best person to ask is the GMs tbh.

@GastlyGibus I don't think you did anything wrong and I don't think you have a bad moral compass. I just logged in my three accounts and 5-starred your two arcs on all three of them. That managed to push one of them back up to 3 stars. I'd suggest filing a petition with a GM. 1-star revenge-reviews seem like harassment IMO.

Great post. Just wanted to highlight this bit. I'd LOVE more extremely hard TFs with dynamics like this. Crimson Prototype is one of the best boss fights in the game. His stackable -HP and lowest-possible-chance-to-hit of ~30% means he just straight up cheats versus a lot of player builds. I'd love future level 50 AVs to... Be immune to proc damage Have a much higher base accuracy, and accuracy buffs to cut through softcapped builds Have Elusivity Have a dynamic where if their res goes down, their regen goes up. (And vice versa!) And if the two stats are debuffed equally...they don't move. (To counter all of the -res and -regen debuffs in the game.) Have an AoE heat exhaustion attack. Have AoE -accuracy powers Have every ST attack of theirs do the same -end as the malta sapper power, or the same -heal on the enemy as Absorb Pain does to the caster Ignore taunt Always goes for the target with the lowest threat value Etc These are the sort of things that would make the game harder.

This would depend on the build. If Power A has a 90% proc rate for both 4.5 and 3.5 procs, and Power B has a 90% proc rate for 4.5 procs, but a 70% proc rate for 3.5 procs, putting the 4.5 in the Power A would be a waste. (So in that situation, the 3.5 would be better in Power A than the 4.5.) **EDIT** I actually do this on my ss/inv. The Hecatomb damage proc works out better for my DPS in Haymaker than KO Blow.

Same! And given that Invuln is one of the most popular powersets in the game, I'd hate to see the rest of the set nerfed to justify Unstoppable being improved.

Yeah, I used to believe sofcapping was optimal until I realised I can buy a 50% def inspiration. The game allows me to carry around 20 little potions that make me unkillable for a minute, and to email myself as many of these potions as I need to, and to store them on the market so I can quickly pick them up in between missions if I need to. The existence of something like this makes slotting for the softcap completely pointless IMO. In more casual play I don't even really need the T4s. When soloing, the speed at which I kill stuff means I can just enter with an empty inps tray, and then just hit F1-F5 and be at the softcap just from drops. And when teaming? I'm fine as long as someone else takes the alpha. (Most PUGs tend to have an over-abundance of melee characters that can do this IME.) I used to softcap religiously, but now I don't see much point to it. Yeah I was thinking we could do a few runs with incarnates [and/or] insps in a follow-up test to help compare. But if we used them on the first test, on all of the runs, they would diminish the impact procs have on dps an lowering player mitigation. For example, if we were to use barrier, that's a permanent 5% extra defense. That's the equivalent of six-slotting thunderstrike. (I.e. it frees us up to procc out a power with no downside.) Or if we used a T4 purple inspiration, that's the equivalent of a softcapped build. (I.e. All the procs! No downside!) Best to keep egregious stuff away from the first round of testing so that we can establish a baseline. But yeah including it in latter testing is definitely something I'd want to explore. I imagine what we'd end up seeing, outside of a few problem powers like Burn, is damage procs only outpacing regular IO builds in a significant way when paired with inspirations. But we'd need to test that out and see if it holds true.

Unstoppable is fine in the 1-49 level range on SOs. It lets players have resistances they otherwise wouldn't, and manage the crash with inspirations. You don't need it, Invuln plays fine 1-49 on SOs without it, but it's there as an option to those who want it. Options are good. This thread is more about how it performs at 50, with IOs.

We can probably classify IO builds in three ways: No damage procs. No -res procs. Softcap defense. -Res procs. Damage Procs in a few powers. Softcap defense. Proc Monsters Hypothesis A: #1 and #2 will likely have no significant difference in their cleartimes. (And if they DO, it would identify a power is broken. Such as Burn/Ground Zero/etc.) Keyword here is "significant". Hypothesis B: #3 would likely have a much faster cleartime, but will be balanced due to having worse mitigation. The steps I'd take to test this: Step 1: Create a softcapped, ~150 recharge, procless, Rad Blast blaster that doesn't use the fire secondary. (Devices, maybe?) Run it through a +4/8 mission a few times to get the cleartime. Step 2: Switch the slotting in power A from set bonus IOs to 6 procs. Run the mission again a few times. Record the cleartime. Step 3: Switch the slotting in Power A back to the set bonus IOs, and then change the slotting in Power B to 6-slotted with IOs. Run the mission again a bunch of times. Steps4-11: Do step 3 but for every power in the primary. Steps 12-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out TWO powers from the primary. Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out THREE powers from the primary. Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out FOUR powers from the primary. Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out FIVE powers from the primary. ...etc... Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out all the SINGLE-TARGET powers from the primary. Steps ??-??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out all the the AOE powers from the primary. Step ??: Repeat the above steps, but now proccing out powers in the primary only where is optimal (Long recharge), and building for set bonuses where is optimal (quick recharge powers). Aka a "proc monster". As Rad blast is extremely proccable, and can take all 3 -res procs, it's ideally suited to test out the impact of procs on cleartime. We could then repeat this process with a blast set that doesn't take procs well (such as fire or archery) to compare. The reason we'd use blasters (probably /dev blasters) is because they're pure DPS, so are likely the best baseline to showcase the impact procs have on both increasing DPS, whilst also increasing survival time via reducing incoming DPS. (Also, due to having no mitigation in their secondary other than their sustain powers, they would be the best AT to show the drop in survival as we remove set bonuses and start adding procs.) If we were to do the above on a melee character, or a debuffer, the issue we'd run into is armour sets/debuff sets intersecting with procs differently. I'd also make sure not to use incarnates or inspirations as they would skew the mitigation-lost-via-slotting-procs metric. Done right, this should show us how: -Damage procs balance in ST attacks -Damage procs balance in AoE attacks -Slotting for damage procs balances vs slotting for set bonuses Not a perfect test by any stretch of the imagination. But a good enough place to start.

LOL. I'm being optimistic given that the devs actually PvE. But you're right. I shouldn't assume.

If the devs are planning to globally nerf something in a way that affects all ATs, they should already have solid data. I'm more than happy to provide supplementary data, though. Once I know what they need. Shouldn't be too hard to put together, I do it enough for the PvP changes. There's actually a lot of useful procs: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Set_Enhancements_with_Special_Effects Especially in PvP. (Where things like -recharge and -end are actually useful!)

Yeah I posted about it earlier in the thread. It's absurdly broken. Works out as an effective 45% damage buff in aggro-capped invincibility, too.

I've asked repeatedly for players to provide numbers that prove procs are OP. So far, no-one has. Obviously nobody is going to spend hours putting together a spreadsheet just because a stranger on the internet asked them to. But at the same time, without the proof, the claims are baseless. So, it appears there's no-where this topic can actually go from here. (Short of the devs announcing a proc nerf, which will motivate the creation of said spreadsheets.) I guess we'll pick this up then. Whataboutism is a fallacy designed to make the person claiming something appear like a hypocrite. (It doesn't actually refute what it being said.) Whataboutism does not apply to testing environments where you discover a flaw in the testing methods. But yeah I'm happy to throw something together with the folks I know, although we'll probably do it whenever the devs start looking at procs in earnest. Cart before the horse and all that.

It's a pervasive opinion on the forums because the majority of players here focus on mitigation over damage when building their characters. (Whilst also denying the existence of incarnate content, where their softcapped characters nearly always require inspirations to be softcapped...completely defeating the purpose of building for the it!) We should not be balancing procs around how much slot investment it takes to softcap defense. They are two separate topics entirely. If Defenders get disproportionately more out of IOS IN GENERAL then that is a separate topic which should be looked at. It's just not a concern when it comes to procs. Procs are an additive. Identical powersets have identical chances to add them or not. And if players are choosing to hamper their proc options by slotting for mitigation instead, then that's a choice they have made. And we cannot balance the game around what happens to be the most popular choice. (Because that removes player agency and creates The One True Way of playing.) Put a defender and corruptor with the same build up against a single hard target and the corruptor is killing it quicker, but it's also taking more damage. That's balanced. I believe that anything in the game is allowed. That's how games work. I also believe that procs can only be considered OP when paired with inspirations. I also believe inspirations should be nerfed. (Case in point - Why would I ever slot for defense when I can buy a 50% defense inspiration? Why would I ever slot for damage, when I can use red inspirations to hit the damage cap, and then go beyond it with procs?) Take inspirations away, and I'm not hitting the defense softcap or the damage cap. Suddenly my procs aren't allowing me to go over the damage cap. So now procs become a balanced tradeoff in building. Suddenly the fire/fire blaster I posted a few pages back can't load up on damage procs, and my build needs to become more balanced between procs and regular IO bonus chasing. It's also important to remember - if procs have their damage reduced, or their chance to fire rate reduced...I'm still going to play my fire/fire blaster exactly the same way. It's still going to load up on procs. It's still going to chug red and purple inspirations. And it's still going to outclass regular IO builds. This is because the source of the perceived problem isn't procs. It's inspirations. Yeah, it's frustrating the discussion has been so broad-strokes. I'd love some sort of granular analysis on a proc-by-proc basis from the people suggesting these nerfs, but I don't think these forums are really the place for it considering the vocal minority of have-nots who just want procs/P2W/incarnates/farming/PLing/etc nerfed regardless of the numbers. (It's a sentiment you see on all MMORPG forums. So it's not specific to this thread/forum/game.) As you said, the concern is a few powers being problematic in how they interact with procs. The issue isn't procs in and of themselves being OP. I think an interesting approach would be to form a list of these "problem powers". Because I have a strong feeling that once these problem powers are nerfed, and once inspirations are nerfed, the "proc problem" some people are talking about will suddenly vanish. Of course, the area of contention will then become which powers are problematic. In my mind, non-damaging attacks and AoEs are the only culprits. Anything single-target is fine due to having negligible impact on group play. (And the idea of globally slowing down how quickly players can solo, and globally reducing the damage in PvP, is too abhorrent for me to even contemplate. Haha.) Haven't had a chance to properly look through your test yet. But I think running it on non-set IOs might be misguided for testing the impact of ST damage procs? Generic IO + Damage Proc builds don't exist. You'd be better of taking two set IO builds and switching the slotting of one power and seeing how they compare for cleartimes. (I.e. 6-slotting thunderstrike vs 6-slotting damage procs. So, maybe a power in rad blast might be your best bet?) This will give you a better indication of the impact of procs in level 50 IO builds IMO. You can then put together an absolute proc monster chugging inspirations and see how that compares. (Honestly, this is probably something we should do at some point. If only to put threads like this to bed for good.) It's okay Bri, I got this. While it is true that PvPers always want an edge over their opponents, it is never at the expense of game balance. If one powerset, for example, turned out to be grossly OP, then PvPers would ask for it to be nerfed. (Evidence of this is the huge list of PvP nerfs we asked for, tested, and ultimately got, during the last two beta cycles. Go have a read if you want to see proof. The idea that PvPers "just want to be OP" isn't true.) PvPers want the game to be balanced well, and then within the constraints of that balance, utilize everything available to them in order to win. Because of this, if removing/nerfing procs lead to better game balance, then PvPers would be all for it. Because game balance matters so much more in PvP. You're also incorrect to assume that speedrunners are happy to use broken things if it lets them kill everything as fast as they can. They too care about game balance. Elmyder is perhaps one of the best-known speed runners in the game, holds numerous records for speed running task forces, etc. He's said plenty of times that Burn needs nerfing, as do purple/red inspirations. And he's right. How can you find satisfaction in speed running if you are doing so with such broken powers? Being unkillable thanks to inspirations, or instakilling bosses thanks to red insps + burn...these are light years more balance-upsetting than Block of Ice being slightly-better-than-normal for a Controller soloing. The reason I mentioned these groups of people is because they have a much greater understanding of game balance than the average forum goer. (You cannot succeed in PvP or Speedrunning without this being true.) So, if there is consensus on the forums from casual players that procs are bad, but all the high-end players who understand game balance (with the apparent exception of Apparition) thinks procs are good...who should you listen to? It's not elitist to say that those who know more, know more. And it's not trolling to ask the ignorant to provide proof to back up their desires for nerfs. If procs should be nerfed, we need to see numbers proving this. And the reason we need to see it for procs, and not so much other power changes, is because a proc nerf affects everyone. Highlighted the relevant part. What you're describing here is a balanced build where a proc is not inherently overperforming, but is acting as part of a competent whole. If your issue is that other sets lack these options, then the answer there is a clear one... More procs. It may also need to increase or stay the same. Let's not guess.

Procs actually balance really well in most forms of PvP. (Mainly because AoE is not really used there.) Plenty of sets that would otherwise not be viable are competitive thanks to single-target damage procs and -res procs pushing them over the DPS threshold required to get a kill. (In 1v1 melee "Fightclub" fights especially.) The removal/global nerfing of damage procs would drastically reduce the number of viable sets. (The opposite goal of game balance.) Back when we first discussed this with Powerhouse, he floated the idea of increasing the PvP damage scalars for melee ATs to compensate for any possible proc nerf. (I.e. If procs boosted meleers DPS by ~100, then the damage scale would be buffed up by the equivalent number to allow for +100DPS on the backend.) This solution didn't prove to be tenable, however, because not every set benefits from procs equally. Claws, the current #1 brute set, benefits from 5/6-slotting procs, whereas Energy Melee, the #1 Scrapper set, doesn't rely on procs so much. This is what would happen: Step 1: Nerf/remove procs. Result: Energy Melee becomes significantly better than Claws. Step 2: Buff the PvP damage scalars for all melee ATs by x%. Result: Claws can now kill an opponent. However, Energy Melee is still significantly better than Claws to the same degree it was after Step 1 AND Energy Melee now finds it incredibly easy to kill an opponent. Final Result: Everyone plays Energy Melee. (Bad balance). I absolutely agree with your idea for adding more proc options. Procs have gone a long way to help bring up underperforming sets. I'd love to see a much more fleshed out proc system in the game, with many more options for proccing powers. (Almost like a second-level IO system, with its own in-game interface explaining how procs work.)

Yeah I pretty much use primarily as a source of -res vs hard targets. The damage (even when loaded up with procs and with boxing+kick) is pretty middling. But with a 47% proc rate, if I'm landing it twice within a 10s window, that's a permanent 20% -res vs hard targets like AVs and other players in PvP. This is not only an indirect damage boost to Cross Punch, but also to all my other attack as well.

Thanks for the ref: Just read through it. Very thorough analysis of how a single power performs both with/without procs. Fantastic analysis! Exactly the sort of thing this thread needs IMO. (I.e. less debate, more number crunching.) Also liked this from one of your earlier posts: