ZemX

Point them to any of the anti-name-release threads on these forums. Contained within are many helpful suggestions about how to come up with new names if the one you want is taken.

Generally, I don't just leap to assuming someone asking for specific ATs or excluding them doesn't know what they are doing but giving "messing up massive pulls" as a reason in THIS case is weird. When does this ever happen on an ITF? Seriously. I'd notice. I am usually playing a Tanker and PuG controllers/doms are often the bane of my existence on ordinary mission teams in the mid-levels but... ITF? Not only do the Cims have their own mez protection but normal mode ITFs are generally always run at 50 and you have half or most the team as Incarnates who are just incinerating everything anyway whether its glued to the floor or not. When is this a problem? This aside, I see some people being pretty judgmental in this thread about PuG leaders and I'd just say remember... PuGs are chaos. Not everyone is totally into forming teams entirely by random and then dealing with the consequences. If they see their radio or mission team filling up with lowbies, they might ask for a 50 in lfg or even a 50 tank/brute or something if they think the team could be safer with something like that. People seem to forget that just because you CAN succeed with any combo doesn't mean you will or even that it's likely, especially with a randomly formed team. I wouldn't just assume that someone being picky in lfg is unaware how the game works. Unless they're looking for a "healer". 🤪

Before we rehash all the same tired arguments, I'd recommend people just re-read the dev post linked earlier in this thread. This is not being done, primarily, because of active name campers and it has nothing to do with "retired" toons either. It has some effect on that due to the log-in requirements but, as stated, the point is simply to free up names from long inactive accounts. And before anybody brings up THAT tired argument again, re-read the f-ing dev post! Seriously. They're not doing it this way because it's the ideal way to surgically target *only* inactive accounts. It isn't. They're doing it this way because it's the right combo of effort and efficacy for them.

People talk about Foot Stomp because it's fun and smashy. It FEELS powerful and it's a good AoE... but it's not the real reason SS is any good. That'd be Rage and, specifically, stacked Rage, which you're only getting with a full IO build. I'm not surprised you're getting better results on Ice Melee with standard slotting. It's a much more well-rounded set. For people who ARE delving into IOs though, Rad/SS is a particularly good combo because it's far less affected by Rage's crash than other primaries are. It doesn't rely on defense, so the defense crash is not a big deal. And there is bountiful endurance recovery in Rad to recover from the endurance crash part of Rage too.

Well first, not sure that is true about Achilles and toHit rolls. I haven't checked the combat logs but CoD does not tag this proc as needing a toHit roll the way it does for all damage procs. But second, wouldn't really care either way. I am never skipping this power but also never adding slots to it. One-slotting any other enhancement isn't making a world of difference either, so I go with Achilles.

It's kind of weird when you think about it. Why does a window this small... ...need to represent the target's level in no less than THREE different ways? Color coding is obviously not always great for everybody, but are the arrows for people who are colorblind AND bad at math? 🤪

I honestly never think about it on my Rad Tankers because I don't bother with defense, so the toHit debuff is unnoticeable. Same with the defense debuff except that one lets me slot an Achilles proc so I care about it just slightly more. The real stuff in Beta Decay is the +recharge buff and, of course, the taunt aura.

I am not suggesting any such undertaking. Nothing like that has ever been done and thus never needs to be. The game hasn't been balanced by all that because it IS impractical to try. Empirically anyway. And there's no need. If the devs want to know who's hurting, they can just look at what's popular and what's not. If the playerbase doesn't think it's a problem. It's not a problem. Doesn't matter what the spreadsheets and player-run testing says.

Hmm... I knew about auto-hit powers but I didn't think non-auto-hit powers actually needed to hit a target twice, effectively, in order to take effect. Also, in CoD, I only see the tag about "requires tohit roll even in auto-hit powers" applied to damage procs, not to stuff like Achilles:-res or F:rech.

You're asking which is better: Apples or Oranges. It's easier to look at something like "Is it worth using this slot for a damage enhancement IO or a %damage proc because that's just calculating what average damage you can expect where the IO enhancement is a straight percentage added damage to the base damage of the power. The proc is whatever chance it has to fire times the total damage the proc does. That gives you the direct comparison. Anything else is up to you. Is a 20% damage proc that deals 70 damage better than a +recharge set bonus? I dunno. 42?? Procs either hit for their full damage or not at all and yeah, each target hit by the AoE rolls their own dice for the proc chance. So if it's 20% chance to do 70 damage you might see one or two of those 70s pop up over the heads of 5 targets hit with the cone. Note that some procs are self-buffs like say the Force Feedback +rech proc but they are coded so they don't stack. In that case, using it in an AoE gives you multiple chances of getting that one fire of the proc you need to gain its benefit. It's effectively like increasing the chance of the buff happening each time you use the AoE since it only has to hit one or more targets. Break out your combinatorial probability texts! No. If it hits a target, they have a chance to proc based on the PPM calc. If you miss, the chance is zero. For non-pseudo pet powers, the chance to proc is once per activation of the power per each enemy hit by that power. That goes the same for one-shot powers as for damage-over-time powers. DoTs are ones where you see something like "14.5768 points of Lethal damage (all affected targets) every 0.5s for 1.1s (100% chance)" in CoD for the description of the power effect. This is still just ONE activation but it deals damage in "ticks" of 14ish damage every half second for 1.1 seconds. Pseudo pets are different. They look similar, like a bunch of damage ticks in DoT, but they work by activating a single-shot damage power repeatedly very quickly. But this doesn't give them more chances to proc. The devs have thought of this one and have made it so psudo-pets work differently. They instead have a chance to proc once every 10 seconds. As if they were firing their damage power off only once every ten seconds. It's weird. Yeah this is just arbitrary. The PPM formula takes into account recharge enhancement but not global recharge buffs. So you slot a enhancement, it lowers the proc chance. But this is supposed to be because now you can use the power more often. The overall idea was that a 1PPM proc in a single target attack should proc roughly once every minute. If you put it in an attack that you can use twice a minute, it should work out to a 50% chance to proc. Global recharge makes a mockery of this though because it's outside the calculation and so it makes the proc have more chances to fire (because you can use ALL your powers more often) without reducing it's percent chance to fire. This is because the Alpha Incarnate acts the same way an enhancement slotted in the power does. It enhances every power that can accept recharge enhancement. It's just a different way than giving you a global recharge boost. Yes and no. Recharge enhancement always reduces the proc chance, it's just that proc chance has a max chance of 90%, so as long as you are not adding enough recharge to drop it below 90%, you are not yet reducing its real chance of firing. Yeah, you could look at those old charts of least resisted and that's probably a good strat. Unless you just do a lot of a particular content that has certain enemies weak to lethal or something (like Carnies).

I think before AT balance can be properly assessed probably procs need a look and also DPA. These are really much bigger fish causing problems not just between ATs but between powersets in the same AT. I don't have much hope the recharge loophole in PPM will ever be closed. We're all too high on it now to be withdrawn. But global arc/radius strength (a.k.a. Gauntlet) getting factored into PPM would be a less extreme but still fair change.

This makes more sense so long as Brutes "stay in their lane" which is that their damage output should be below scrappers/stalkers but above tankers. Their survivability should be above scrappers/stalkers but less than tankers. People have been trying to use Ston's data as a proxy for damage output and that's not what it is. Soloing at +4/x8 necessarily involves being sturdy enough to not die while clearing the map. If you need to focus less on defense you can focus more on offense whether that's active powers or insps or just build strategy. It's still a trade-off. But this doesn't change the fundamental ordering of the melee ATs because they aren't arranged by soloing speed at +4/x8. Never have been. Hopefully never will be. They are arranged in order of damage output and, inversely, survivability. Or they are supposed to be anyway.

Need to prove there's a problem before you fix it. All anybody has done in this thread is mostly quote Ston's test data which is, it needs to be repeatedly stated because people just LOVE to ignore it.... a test about clearing a map solo at +4/x8 with IOs, Incarnates, and proc-monstered builds all mixed in. Not only is this game NOT balanced for solo performance. It is not balanced for any of that other stuff either. Ston's data is, in other words, completely useless for balancing. That wasn't the point of it. The point was comparing the powersets for each AT relative to one another when you minmax and showing how that does solo. If you're making statements as general as "Tankers outdamage Brutes" based on his data... you're wrong. Simple as that. His data does not prove this statement in the general case. Only in the case outlined by the conditions of his test. How much of the Brute's performance is degraded by being less tough than the Tanker? Was he spending more time repairing damage? Eating oranges instead of reds? If damage output was the point, why not run at -1/x8? Because it wasn't the point. But if you want to make damage output the point... then test for it. And NOTHING else. Even if you do just look at his data, you cannot just say "Tankers outdamage Brutes" by any great amount even in Ston's test conditions. The average clear times are literally just 8 seconds different out of 5 minutes 18 seconds for the Brutes. There's more variation powerset to powerset than there is between the ATs. If you balanced powersets vs. one another first, the difference between Brutes and Tankers in this data could shift dramatically. Which is entirely why you can't just mix all the variables together and draw conclusions about what to fix. You'll likely just be breaking something else if you do that.

I would suggest Axe, Fire, or Ice melee to go with that shield. Axe is amazing. Pendulum is nicely embiggened by Tanker's inherent so you can swing it at anything and hit nine of their closest friends easily, especially after sucking them all in with Axe Cyclone. Ice and Fire both give you decent looking sword powers for that sword and board action too, and have better performance than Broadsword. Oddly enough, this thread makes me, a tanker player, want to play Brutes. I think there's a lot of over-generalizing going on based on the minmax data, so it'd be interesting to see how some of my tanker builds work on Brutes.

This weekend's Tanker Tuesday Tour was a trio of tankers who tore through three tricky tip tasks. Tremendous! Thanks to PapaSlade and MsAligned from yours truly. It was a treat.

I'm guessing that must be the 9999 Repel then because 100 points KB should have done it for the KB component.

That "variable" is a modifier. It allows power effects to scale differently depending on what AT is using them and at what level. You are looking at the power with "None" selected for the "Show for AT" field. Here's what it looks like when you select "Boss Monster". This is likely some requirement of the game engine that everything has a magnitude and a modifier. Which is probably why "melee_ones" exists as it's just a modifier whose value is always equal to "1". In any case, don't feel bad. Half the time even those with built-in knockback protection and resistance are going for a ride because of that child effect, which is tagged unresistible and is, lol, 9999 Repel.

Just checking what the plan might be for Saturday. If we're still on Bio tankers and wanting to do something 50ish, I'll have to bring a substitute. I've missed too many of these to keep up with my Bio.

It's less about playing just one character as it is about NOT playing hundreds. People who alt a lot, and especially those who powerlevel in farms, have a vastly greater demand for influence than do those who balance their time playing 50s and leveling up alts. We don't have 100s of alts, but we're also never strapped for cash because playing any 50 is basically printing money with little effort and funding a new alt is just sending an email from a rich alt to a new one. I don't even bother converting merits anymore. Used to. But now I just buy converters to use for spinning uncommon recipes into rares when they pile up enough and I want to clear them out. I build rare IOs from dropped salvage and converted recipes, then list them on the AH. Between that, selling common drop recipes, and just plain inf rewards, I never much think about money anymore. And these days the only explores I bother grabbing are the one per zone I need for LRT beacons.

I can't tell if you're being serious. I might be proud of a clever name I managed to secure or a well-written bio. I might be proud of the build, if I'm a min/maxer. But I can't imagine why I'd care about the calendar date of the toon's creation. No, it's not their "birthday". In fact that's one answer: Roleplayers likely do not give half a shit about the creation date. It is definitely not their birthday. Imagine the shame famous roleplayer @Snarky must have felt when people didn't see "First appearance: Issue:Error! (1463-10-31)" on his toon's bio? I am not half the roleplayer he is, and I still don't care when my toon was created. Then again, I didn't really care whether that was displayed or not so... why am I even here? Can we talk about Fold Space instead?

In my experience it is extremely rare in game for someone to be a big enough douche-nozzle to be kicked from a team. Most of the time it does happen, it's because someone went AFK in the mission and we completed it, then had to kick them to select the next mission. Even then their space is customarily reserved for a short time to see if they come back. As for this lone-wolfing business, it happens more often than that but rarely results in kicking. Most of the time, I'll just be silently judging you for it. To me it's more of a small breach in etiquette than a kicking offense. You'll be removed from my Christmas-card list for doing it. And I'll make fun of you to other people at parties.

Yeah, like I said a lot of this is so dependent on the content you typically run and with who. I find in most mid-level pick-up teams that I use Taunt a ton for grabbing stray aggro without having to leave "the pocket". My opener is usually Rad Infection or Ground Zero since they have the widest reach in the "piss everything around me off before the controller does with his blasted AoE immob" dept. But it's just really common to have stuff going on away from the main pack I have around me and it's nice to be able to reliably reach out and say "you there... get over here!" without having to go smack it in the mouth personally. But yeah, all that only matters if the fights are lasting long enough for it to happen and/or the rest of the team actually needs the services of a tanker. If I spent more of my time in 45+ teams, I'd probably think about dropping Taunt too. Have to confess here that I pick Lores based on theme. I am vaguely aware they offer subtle differences but mainly, the only thing I care about getting from them is damage and because I spend as little time as possible in 45+ teams, I don't fret a lot over those other differences. I'd say I most often go with BP or Longbow just because I love seeing the big guys.

If you're happy with your group clearing speed, then I can't say it's a bad call. But just in general, AoE is a big advantage on Tankers due to the increased areas and target caps. Fault is good. But both is better. If I really had to choose between, them, I'd probably go with Tremor though as it's going to hit more targets more easily and it recharges a bit faster, making it that much more likely have full coverage on FF:rech procs along with the other two powers. Like a lot of things, it depends on what content you run most often. Since I mostly team and do so on teams where tanking actually helps, my goal is usually reaching the most targets the most often, to keep all that aggro. So I don't skip any AoEs. If you're mostly soloing, bosses and other tough enemies will be limiting your clear speed more than AoE will. As for the rest, you have plenty of recharge and it's easy to cap recharge debuff resistance on Rad Armor. I always go with Musc and Reactive. Barrier seems most often called for in Hard Modes and just in general seems to provide the most immediate relief to teammates in trouble. I don't think too hard on the others. I'll say that not having high defense or the means to protect any that you get from other sources, I often just ignore it. Which means I get hit a lot. Which means debuffs are a problem. As good as other Epics are, I always find myself leaning on Energy for Focused Accuracy so I don't get toHit floored by all the enemies that debuff, toHit... and they do seem rather common. Laser Eyes and Torrent aren't the best, but not terrible either if you want to add some ranged and more AoE. Laser Eyes are even a decent ranged Taunt given the tanker AoE gauntlet taunt and the fact LBE is autohit now. Just lacks the range debuff of the Taunt power itself. But you said you skipped Taunt anyway, so perhaps team tanking isn't really a goal for you.

"Adversely impacting" can be a fine line. The team is going to successfully complete the mission. But I've been on plenty of mid-level teams where a Scrapper, Stalker, Brute, or Blaster runs off to solo and found myself with the rest of the team whittling down some highly resistant boss thinking, "Gosh you know what we could have used right here....?" Yeah, if it's nukeball time, go nuts. Though if it's me, I'd still rather duo or trio than go off solo on a team. But on any "normal", i.e. not endgame, team... my personal etiquette is if you join the team, play with the team. Unless there's some specific goal to speed or stealth or hunt. Stick around. OP asked for opinions and that's mine.

Or those comments are coming from people who join teams that AREN'T rolling nuke balls all the time. This is one of the big reasons my favorite teams are leveling mission teams in the 20-40 range. The lack of Incarnates and level shifts makes a huge difference. You get something closer to the original intent of the game where teams actually can work together to defeat enemies instead of just being eight demi-gods face-rolling around soloing a map. I don't really because I keep hearing it's for the challenge and.... that doesn't add up. It has to be more than that because the same or greater challenge can be had solo. Which means the people doing this lone wolfing either want an audience for their greatness or they just want to benefit from the increased XP that a team gives them, which is somewhat ironic considering a few of the comments up-thread about not wanting to "carry" weaker teammates. I suppose it's also possible they think splitting away is better for the whole team, but that's very debatable. It would be a more interesting discussion to have than the one we've been having at least.