ZemX

They help you.... "perform".

"Grandiloquent" is grandiloquent!

It probably IS just Chilling Embrace. It also has a 0.5 second refresh period so it is pulsing out five debuffs twice per second and refreshing a 15 second taunt effect at the same time. By comparison, my Rad Tanker's taunt aura is refreshing half as fast and only doing two debuffs. Threat is an accumulated value over time, not an override. The more you keep hitting or debuffing something you have already taunted, the faster your threat counter is going up with that enemy. So as far as that goes, yeah, what Icicles is adding is that it is reliably hitting everything around you once every two seconds which is more often than anybody else without a damage aura is probably hitting that many enemies.

I kid, of course. Although about one of the only times I remember being on a team with Snarky was a Tarikoss SF that failed and disbanded about 20 seconds after entering the first door because of a total screw up with levels. Definitely the team lead's fault of course... but Snarky was there, wasn't he? WASN'T... HE?!

If only there were some common factor we could point to in all of Snarky's terrible PuG experiences! 😈

That's interesting because what we know (or think we know) about threat calculation comes FROM back then in a post by Castle on the official forums. The equation given did not mention threat magnitude at all but instead threat duration as being the factor on which threat was multiplied. The ranged Taunt power, thus, has a stronger taunt effect because it has a much longer base duration (41 seconds) than Gauntlet's "punch-voke" (15 seconds). Unless taunt mag somehow factors into the initial amount of threat that is applied by just the power itself. It's unclear how powers that don't deal damage (like Taunt itself) factor into threat. We know they do because just tossing ranged Taunt out there almost always peels a target off whoever they were attacking as long as that person wasn't themselves taunting or punch-voking. The threat-value of debuffs seems the most likely explanation if Ice seems to do better at taunting. Especially if each separate debuff effect adds its own threat multplier. Chilling Embrace is 5 separate debuff effects in one power (jump height, recharge time, move speed, damage, and max run speed). It's all a bit academic, I suppose. The actual amount of threat any Tanker is doing only really matters when vying for aggro FROM other taunt-capable teammates. Nice if you have some baby tankers with you on a radio mission or something but otherwise not often relevant. Maybe most useful to know when YOU are the baby tanker leveling up. 🤪

Yeah, oddly enough the Form of Body (staff offensive stance) coupled with Bio's Defensive Adaptation is probably your overall most defensive mode of operation in Bio/Staff just because of the extra +res(all) in Sky Splitter, which on Tankers is a whopping +13%! Though you will probably find advice to skip Sky Splitter if what you're after is best DPS attack chain. Then again, if that's what you're after, you don't want Staff in the first place. I've yet to get my Bio/Staff to 50 but I have a Rad/Staff I play far too much of the time who can self cap all resistances (even Cold) with NO cooldown powers like Melee Hybrid, ROP or Meltdown. Just Rad Armor, Tough, Might of the Tanker (in Guarded Spin), Sky Splitter in Form of Body, and IOs. Overkill? Probably. But lots of fun. I'm sure Bio can dish out more damage in the situations where you don't need to be that survival-focused.

I keep hearing this but have never heard an explanation. Yeah, it has both a debuff aura and a damage aura but Dark Armor has that AND a fear aura on top and nobody talks about it being an aggro monster (just an endurance monster). Have always been curious if this thing about Ice Armor is real or just perception bias. But threat and how it is calculated has always been something of a mystery so anything is possible.

Sounds pretty mad scientist to me. You're gonna collect 20 random alien blood samples so you can give unlife to this little monstrosity?!

I think I'm up to date but as far as I can recall, it's always worked this way. When I posted that last reply, I had just tried it again to verify. I was looking at the View Totals popup window while clicking/unclicking the yellow dot. It was clearly moving res up and down as I did it by the value of the proc. See if there are any other settings you have in Effects/Maths settings maybe that might affect it. You could also check other buff procs like FF:Rech. I know that one adds 100% to my global recharge in Mid's when the yellow dot is checked. Always have to make sure it's not checked to see my real global recharge for the build. If I think about it later, I'll have another look at Mid's myself.

Derp. I meant to say "the former". Or rather "NOT the latter" because there's more than just resistance you can add to a resistance-based toon. But adding defense is, in my opinion, a waste of slots. You are either accepting that you'll be dropped by defense debuffing enemies or, if you can survive them, you are basically proving you didn't need the added defense in the first place. There are several caveats: One is farming of course. If you can avoid defense debuffing enemies, then of course defense is valuable even when not backed by DDR. Two is teams. They change everything. Having base defense means you need less defense buffing to take you well over the soft-cap and into territory where even without DDR you are unlikely to be dropped below the soft cap. You just can't get there by yourself is all. See above. I made a mistake in my response to your post. I meant to say that building anything BUT defense is more valuable on a toon with no DDR. I haven't played Elec Armor, but I play a ton of Rad Armor and there I focus mainly on Res, Recharge, and slow resist. Have zero difficulties in low level TFs. And defense debuffing is quite prevalent at all levels. Basically anyone with blades or bullets debuffs defense. CoT Earth mages in Posi 1 even. Tankers are most susceptible to defense debuffing too because, if you're doing it right, you are the focus of most attacks. You are going to be hit often enough to drop defense if you have no DDR or are not well over the soft-cap. But if you're going to give it a shot, be sure to have at least one defense, like Smashing Defense, in your combat monitor so you can see when it goes red.

Mid's does include SMoT, same way it does any proc. If the yellow proc dot is selected on the power, it includes the effects. Though it only includes ONE stack, so keep that in mind. I take it early and then drop it later. It is good damage if you can hit at least two enemies but not much else. In general gameplay? The latter. Think about it this way... that defense is gone entirely against defense debuffing enemies because you have no DDR. If you can survive them, you can survive the ones that DON'T have defense debuffing. But that doesn't necessarily mean building more resistance. Maybe more recharge or slow debuff resistance? Whatever it is, I like to build things up that I'll always have available to me. Getting my defense zeroed after I spent slots building it up just doesn't feel good.

It looks a lot like Geforce Experience with a new name. I'm sure there are a few differences but odds are I will use it the same way I use Geforce Experience... to tell me when there are new drivers to install, and nothing else.

I wouldn't ignore the weapon sets actually. They are just as plausibly "pure speedster" because the power doesn't have to be in the weapon so much as the arm wielding it. The reason you want to look at weapons is what @biostem said. Some of them, like Staff, are just plain "speedier" looking animation wise. Staff can even have it's effects colored to add trailing light to the moves to enhance the idea they're just going at super speed. Claws and Savage are also great for this. Dual Blades is almost unnaturally fast looking in its animations. Ironically, I've always disliked that about it but it might fit if you are purposely wanting something that's unnaturally fast looking. Staff, Claws, Savage, or DB will all just flow too. You'll be a non-stop blender set on "puree" in combat and that will fit right in with theme. Savage in particular has Rending Flurry with its Frenzy powered expanded radius that you can imagine is you running around to all the enemies and hitting them personally, even though it just looks like you spinning in place. Consider taking Combat Teleport and getting used to keybinds for it to BAMF around like you're running too fast for the eye to see as well.

That was always wishful thinking by people just didn't want the name release to happen. There was no real reason to believe that all those unused names were somehow all gibberish that nobody would want.

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).