Ston

Another abysmal month to be a Rikti Pylon!

This was a fun challenge, thanks for posting that bounty @Koopak! Looking forward to the next one. Only submitting one "official" record. Got my best time with Illusion/Arsenal. I did a lot of tests with other builds and a lot of them could get down to the 32-36s range. Those included: Illusion Control + Fire / Elec / Rad / Arsenal Fire Control + Fire / Stone In my opinion, a big takeaway from this challenge is that the assault sets are very well balanced. I saw a lot of 30-40s results between myself and others with a variety of builds. I don't think you'd see this tight of a grouping with as many sets on any other ATs. This can probably be credited to Assault sets having more balance between recharge / animation times of their attacks. Other AT's should take notes, this is something I've harped on for years now. Procs aren't the problem, it's the gaps in recharge / animation times between sets. Run Type: Pylon (Open Beta) Archetype: Dominator Primary Powerset: Illusion Secondary Powerset: Arsenal Assault Epic: Mace Time in seconds: Best: 30 Seconds Burst: Burst - due to Geas Hybrid: Assault - Radial* (toggled on) Number of Runs: 1 Version: Open Beta 27.7.5926 Temps Used: Offensive Amp, Dagger, and Geas (No insps or Lores) illusion_arsenal_pylon.mbd

100% agree that no power changes should be balanced with procs in mind.

I think it’s a buff because it’s much more reliable now. On live, those windows could still get cancelled. Sometimes damage wouldn’t cancel them, but it was a toss up whether or not it would work how you wanted it to.

Here’s some footage of me messing with it on beta. It feels incredible. Shout out to the devs for making sure Stalkers didn’t walk out of this update with a nerf. Going into hide from ATO or Placate feels very reliable now when you’re trying to land follow-up crits. https://youtu.be/ABOwEynfnQ4?si=_bMtdc2DBpMDL4nB

Shield is also very strong. It's noticeably less powerful once you get into higher content though. Especially 4* with a good team comp. Bio, Rad, Fiery Aura are probably your best there. The benefits of Shield get less potent when you have Kinetics and Cold Domination on your team. Super Reflexes and Shield are amazing for everything up to that though.

It is for ST DPS. Which usually is the most important thing on a full team. It's the only set close to competing with Axe for that. Also has pretty good AoE still.

Yes, fire as well! I'd probably but MA, SS, Fire in A-Tier and TW, Axe in S-Tier

It's also very easy to get to 95% chance to hit in this game. Chances are you have teammates with Tactics or defense debuffs. Or you can just use a yellow inspiration. So the damage procs, damage bonus, damage aura, and resistance debuffs from Bio Armor become the most valuable tools. Not to mention, Bio has a +7.5% tohit buff while in Offensive Mode from Environmental Modification. Unenhanced Invincibility needs 4 targets to hit the same value.

Bio Armor / Rad Armor + Martials Arts / Battle Axe / Titan Weapons / Super Strength

The code will make enemies run after taking 10 ticks of damage in combat logs in a certain period of time (which I'm not sure of, might be 10 seconds?) So if you hit a boss with an attack that has 5 ticks of DoT, 4 procs fire, and interface procs, they will run. You can test it with Freezing Touch (10 ticks of damage), it will make enemies run away nearly every time regardless of the damage dealt. There are some exceptions in the code such as undead enemies which will never run. There are also other factors that will make enemies flee or fight at different rates. For example, enemies will run earlier if they've had their allies recently defeated near them. Hope this system gets an improvement soon. The threshold for enemies fleeing is WAY too low for the amount of damage and effects flying around.

HP% is a factor, but it is directly tied to ticks of damage taken. I can link the Ourodev code later. Other factors are rank, level difference, number of allies alive/defeated. You can test this with Freezing Touch on any enemy. Or even spamming Brawl/Boxing + Interface DoT. Enemy will eventually run away even if they have 95% HP left.

You definitely can and often do. I did a test where I used unslotted Freezing Touch on a +4 boss. Since the power does 10 ticks of damage, it always make made them run away. Even though the damage was super low. In practice, this happens all the time since interface, procs, and DoT are stacking damage on enemies often. I think it needs to be within 10 seconds. If you hit an enemy with two attacks quickly and fire off 5 procs in each, they’ll run away. It’s just way too sensitive.

This is how it works in the code for most enemies. There are exceptions like Vahzilok zombies that will never run. But most enemies have a baseline of running away for 10 ticks of damage within a few seconds. This can be any kind of damage tick.. procs, DoT, interface, etc. For example, an attack with 2 damage types will count as 2 ticks of damage since they are separate on combat logs. They're also programmed to run away sooner if their allies have been defeated near them or if you're higher level than them. The only way they will keep attacking you is if they're taunted or they outnumber you and you're lower on HP than them. I have been requesting for this to be changed and I think devs are aware.

Yep, Evasion is a taunt aura on Brutes/Tankers: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_defense.super_reflexes.evasion&at=tanker I don't think every Scrapper set needs taunt aura. I think the game just needs to fix the terrible AI feeling engine that forces enemies to run away if they take 10 ticks of damage within a certain amount of time.

Exposing - Rad/Regen Brute

Heatin Up - Fire/Fire Scrapper

Yes, Upshot & Aim used whenever they were up for Blasters. And any "Build Up" type powers were used for Brutes whenever they were up. For Super Strength, I tried both but decided to single-stack Rage, as that gave the best results.

The +damage & +range is usually better for Blasters than the buffs from Musculature. The +range doesn't make a difference in this test, but gonna get +33% damage with either choice. I normally don't use the +45% Musculature power.

It isn't needed, but with the -res from Annihilation, it is more valuable to have in the chain than Swipe or Strike. Eviscerate would be another option but the long animation is a DPS loss.

The intention was to leave room for some set bonuses and damage enhancing, but after taking another look, some powers would benefit more from additional procs. For most blaster attacks, I used 3pc Thunderstrike (acc/dam + dam/end + acc/dam/end) + 3 procs. Without any other buffs/bonuses, this slotting has Dehydrate at 155 DPA (2 damage procs + Achilles -res). If I were to change the slotting to 3 damage procs + Achilles and two lvl 53 Acc/Dam HOs, the DPA goes up to 168.9. The tradeoff between damage slotting and procs isn't as impactful on Blasters as it would be for Brutes, but this is definitely something I should revisit in the tests. There are only a handful of ranged attacks that can take 4 procs anyway, so I'll go through and re-run some tests with those.

I didn't really want to capture the meta for these tests as much as I wanted to get some baseline comparisons between powersets using only their powers. But yeah throwing Char in could definitely help some of the weaker sets, like Gloom and Cross Punch would for melee sets.

So here's another project I've been working on for awhile. I've been curious how ranged and melee sets would compare with each with different proc constraints. My hope was that the DPS ranking between sets would not vary much given different proc parameters. As always, I don't claim to be an expert on each powerset and I could have made mistakes with the attack chains, but I ran them through my personal DPS calculator and tried to find the best for each. I used my best judgement for attack chains and proc placement but would be happy to re-run tests with any suggestions. I'll attach .zips with all the builds used. Here's what I ended up with: Selected Archetypes: Blaster and Brute blaster_proc_tests.7z brute_proc_tests.7z

The results will be mostly the same. The best sets will still be at the top and the struggling sets will still be at the bottom. The thing that’s really separating these sets is DPA. A set like Spines has terrible DPA compared to Battle Axe. The margin will only get wider if you only use the inherent powers.