Ratch_

Sorry for nitpick, you are correct in this post, but Bio gets +res per close opponent. DNA siphon has the description tag of taunting but it has no inherent ability despite the description text. Evolving Armor is it's only way of taunting enemies. There are two consistency concerns with taunt auras between all these sets though (invuln, willpower, energy, bio, rad, shield) that I would like to be addressed because 2 of the six get the short end of the stick. They all have mag 3 taunt, but the duration is the concern. Willpower has the "weakest" taunt aura, with it's duration only being 1.25s. Energy Aura has the second "weakest", with a duration of 2.25s. The rest are 13.6s, more than tenfold the duration of Willpower's. 😞 Willpower and Energy aura have the ability to keep enemies close to you once they are in range, but the other 4 gives you better ability to actually herd a bit because of the longer duration. You can give enemies the taunt affect and then move through the enemies and group them better while the taunt wears off and doesn't let you do this as consistently with Willpower and Energy Aura.

I went ahead and did the runs with combustion for you. It's not as poor as my skeptical impressions were of it...though it's definitely being carried rather hard by procs. And a larger departure from Combustion vs Rain of Fire is that Combustion needed 6 slots while Rain of Fire works really well with just 1 or 2. My favorite part about rain of fire is actually the slow, but I'd say if you prefer combustion it's definitely a worthy pickup still if you want to give it all the slots it needs. Thanks to procs, it also packs a bit more oomph compared to Rain. (My build generally took semi-decent QoL hit to run it, losing about ~4% s/l/e/n res, some recovery, and a bit higher end consumption. Nothing too drastic though.) Averaging around the 3:35-3:50 range consistently. Still never breaking above the 4 minute mark. Since I was going to do some runs anyways, I went ahead and meta-gamed the mission a bit and the build, and crafted one that uses both those AoEs. I still am very happy with my personal build (I need my ss+sj), but doing something like this gives you a higher potential clear time. I'll attach the mids file for it if anyone wants to peek under the hood and potentially take some inspriation from it. Caustic Soul Trapdoor Metagaming.mxd

I can't say exactly, other than my minimal anecdotal experience with it. I'm a bit skeptical, but I'll hold off on that though since I wouldn't mind doing a few runs with it. I've been plenty wrong before on my perception of powers vs power performance in game. I'll copy my blaster onto the beta though and swap out RoF with combustion and give it a go. Do you have any particular way you'd like to see it slotted?

Fire/Fire blaster trapdoor update/refresh since Burn got fixed and fire sword can now slot achilles. Another small adjustment, ring of fire can now be skipped. Hard to substantiate this claim, but from my experience of running trapdoor missions a lot and piloting this blaster through them, I really don't think much, if any time is really being lost since this change. The burn proc fix obviously hurts, and Achilles being able to be slotted into fire sword obviously helps....but at the end of the day the core is so strong the results I'm getting are not surprising to me at all. Essentially minimal changes is what I'm getting at. I'd guesstimate at most a 5-10s difference from losing proc'd patch burn, regardless - in the 10 runs I did I never broke above the 4 minute mark at all. 3:40-3:50 very consistently.

The 3:50 range is definitely hitting in the realm of "that's illegal" 😁 Nice run! Axe looks killer

Probably still depends on AT, rules still apply with lower damage scale ATs wanting procs more than dmg enhance...but for blaster and scrapper I'm seeing best damage with: arma dmg+5, arma fireProc, FoTG proc, 3 other dmg procs. (though I switch one of those out for an ACC/DAM personally since my build doesn't have enough toHit as is)

fire manip blasters eating good

It does interact with build up, any patch that drops during Build Up's duration is getting the dmg enhance. While I can't ever disagree that you won't be standing in a single spot for a long time in normal play, I don't find it true that you will never be standing in a similar area for over 10s+. Patch stacking does and can happen in normal play. It happens often in solo play, and in team play it can occur in a lot of TF content like ITFs. It does not really happen in +0 speedrunning content or radio missions...so impact of the power is less there but I don't think this is unique to IG itself. Damage auras here really aren't carrying lot's of value at this group clearing speed. I understand your concerns for the power but I think we will have to agree to disagree that the power needs help.

Well, it's better than other damage auras since it essentially equivalents blazing aura ( which is the strongest dmg aura available to any melee AT set. It does more than other similar auras I assume just by nature of it being considered Fire ). I'm really not sure what more you are wanting this power to be doing? IG is also contaminating targets for you and it compared to quills which is the only other dmg aura in an actual melee set, quills doesn't even begin to hold a candle to it by this point in regards to just pure damage output.

The instances where only 1 patch is down and ticking is my stance on why this power is fine as is. It does not get tanker radius buffs, a drawback of being a pet as well as it being dmg cap limited to I believe 400% (only really harming brutes), but this does actually crit on scrappers. I heavily disagree that this power is bad by any stretch. I like the flavor and think it does it's job very well in the set. The idea of it doing less compared to other auras in certain situations and doing more in other situations is something I welcome personally.

I do share a bit of this opinion in some regards but @Bopperpointed out to me that IG for tankers has the older damage scale so the picture I painted earlier, while not entirely incorrect, isn't quite right. If you compare it on other ATs like a scrapper (which can crit) or a brute, then under those circumstances where two patches are down and ticking on targets, then it equals to Blazing Aura which is very good. I do definitely think the mechanics of patch laying and stacking still has implications on the overall strength of the power, and it being a pet comes with it's own drawbacks as well....overall though the power is very strong and anything that the set needs at this point is beyond IG's reach.

Out of curiosity, is the way it works now is that the group that drops/creates the entity is now responsible for rolling the procs?

When you toggle on the power, the moment that first patch drops, procs will be rolled. And then they will roll again every 10s onward

The patches have not changed in the slightest. How the power used to work is how the power still works... It's only the proc interaction that has changed. And can now be slotted with ATOs.

All/Radiation Melee/Irradiated Ground: This power can now only proc once every 10 seconds. Can now accept ATOs Posting as an FYI/Update 😁

This is exactly where I stand with it and my whole drive for making the thread 👍

Here's the data link for the build. There are some changes being made to burn in beta right now, so just keep that in mind. I think this build overall is highly functional, maybe not quite necessary for a lot of things. I enjoy slotting like this for blaster soloing a lot. In teams I think a decent amount of what's being done here in slotting could be trimmed for more offense/recharge. Hope you can land on something you like!

I appreciate the detailed write on the power dichotomy here. The one thing you touched on and something that I would like to expand is the power's gimmick, contamination. For anyone that has leveled a radiation character from the ground up I hope can resonate with this sentiment too, but pre-IG this set is really rough. Rad Siphon doesn't do a lot of damage, it heals sometimes, eventually you can contaminate your targets and start to churn out a bit more reasonable damage. You don't have access to the big hitter's until much later in the set. For the most part you are just relying on Contaminated Strike spam to put in work. The turning point really doesn't occur until IG is unlocked (and no, it's not because it can be proc bombed). Something that I think is really being lost in this decision is just how harmful it is for the set's holistic feel. IG at 10 targets is the sole power allowing for frequent wide contamination. Rad Siphon finally starts to reliably heal. Contamination procs more naturally, and the damage of it's attacks start to catch up to match other sets. This target cap change is severely hurting Radiation Melee in more ways than I think is apparent until you go out and start playing with the set vs larger groups. I really dislike the use of "spawning burn pets" that's been brought up in this thread since I think it's rather a loaded insinuation and what this power is creating vs what that power is creating are two different beast entirely. The delivery vessel may be the same or have similarities, but the output and function are not. Let alone the major design difference that one is activated vs one is toggled/passive. Just look at the activation period difference between these two entities being created and the damage being done between them. Because no word is given on this change, we as a community can't provide direct feedback on it or have a dialogue on the reasoning behind the decision. At the risk of putting words in your mouth, I apologize, but I need to plea for this change to not go live. If the decision for this change is a part of some design standardization, ie. Ignite from AR & Burn are creating entities at 5 target max, this one is doing something similar but is at 10 target max, therefore it's straying from standard design, then I ask of you to please take a second look at the set individually. It's not atypical for powers to break standard design constraints even outside of the damage formula, just look at Crowd Control from War Mace, a cone with 10 targets, or even all the recent 15ft radius AoEs that scrappers/stalkers have been getting access to with recent additions. Irradiated Ground is the power that glues this set together, it's more than just a damage aura, it's the set's engine. Please reconsider this target cap reduction.

It's more than just affecting IOs. The power is losing 5 potential targets it can hit as well, which is where my contention lies. 10 max targets -> 5 max targets.

Okay, then yes, you are correct...it used to work this way. It does not work this way anymore. Hence my concern for this power's target cap reduction. All/Radiation Melee/Irradiated Ground: This power can now only proc once every 10 seconds and hit up to 5 targets. It's now using similar tech to enflame, and all this really ends up translating to is that this power no longer checks for procs on a pet/entity creation. Proc checking is agnostic to the pets, and instead is tied to the activation group for IG. Once every 10s a proc will check, just like every other toggle in the game.

Can you elaborate a bit more about the "twice as often"? Are you suggesting this power is proccing "twice as often" as other damage auras?

I don't think it's overpowered anymore since that traditional advantage is gone. Yes, if you are standing in a single spot and not moving at all it will do more damage than a similar counterpart (Quills), but really how often is this happening for us in live play to where the current small (potential) damage advantages this power has would really warrant a halving of it's target cap?

Sure, but it is not doing more damage than the other damage auras. It summons burn pets at a rate of 5s and each one with a lifetime of 10s. They have an activation of 2s. This ends up meaning after a 5s duration and you are getting the 2 pets ticking permanently, a dmg tick will occur once every second. 4.8937 fire damage Death Shroud 10.5659 neg damage Irradiate Ground: 4.8937 * 10 = 48.937 fire damage Death Shroud: 10.5659 * 5 = 52.8295 neg damage *Tanker values I'll edit my post as Quills is what I stated as being the most similar and I think this is more of the reality. Not sure why I was brain farting above and looking at Death Shroud. Quills 7.9245 lethal Irradiated Ground: 4.8937 * 10 = 48.937 fire dmg Quills: 7.9245 * 5 = 39.6225 lethal dmg On this merit alone I can see the target cap reduction to (in theory) have the powers match...but in practice IG does not pull ahead until 10s+ of standing in that specific patch. As you are moving through the game you can expect to not be having more damage because of patch dropping vs a following dmg aura Irradiated Ground: 4.8937 * 8 = 39.1496 fire dmg Quills: 7.9245 * 5 = 39.6225 lethal dmg In the "golden" scenario at max target caps for each respectively: Irradiated Ground: 48.937 * 5 = 244.685 fire dmg Quills: 39.6225 * 10 = 396.225 lethal dmg

Since no thread has been made for this power going to take it upon myself to try to get some feedback on it from others. Personally I am in acceptance with the proc change, but am completely puzzled why this power is deserving of a target cap reduction. No other damage aura does this, and as Quills (in my mind) being it's closest counter part, what is this power doing that others are not that would justify this target cap reduction?

Various Power Changes All/Radiation Melee/Irradiated Ground: This power can now only proc once every 10 seconds and hit up to 5 targets.