Alouu

@Obitus Preach on brother! I wonder how common the sentiment "it doesn't seem like a problem to me but if the devs are going to change it I might as well push for the least painful changes" is. It's definitely mine.

That probably depends on what you mean by leave them. If my area factors were to mesh with the current 10 second recharge behaviour it would result in a nerf, so either there would need to be two area factors one for patches and one for the clicky AOEs, or the solution I just detailed.

For chain powers there are two alternatives: 1: Have a fixed Targets amount that just estimates what kind of result you would get on average, very much like the area factor does now. 2: Wait until the whole chain resolves until applying the procs. For AOE rains/patches, currently the way these work is on initial cast and every 10 seconds thereafter they roll their procs based on as if the power had a recharge time of 10 seconds. Since the amount of these 10 second intervals is known beforehand (eg. in a 15 second rain you get 2, one at 0 seconds and one at 10 seconds), this is what can be done: Each interval the number of targets in the patch being hit is determined, which in turn determines the area factor under my system. This proc chance is then divided by the number of total intervals that the patch is already known to have, and then the procs are rolled. (fire off, or dont). Of course all of these procs connected to this one power are immune to being locked-out by previous rolls they had in the same specific cast of that power (so if a proc fired on the first interval, it can still fire again on subsequent intervals), however the lockout for the next cast would begin as soon as the power activated. So overall you get the same total chance as in a normal AOE but split over however many intervals there are in that particular power, and it wouldnt act as if the power had a recharge time of 10 seconds, rather it would use the actual recharge time of the power and just use those 10 second intervals for proc application.

Yeah okay, I didnt want to dominate the thread with a post full of images but I'll wrap them in a spoiler.

In terms of single target powers, I do have these: Graphs showing the ratio and difference between the two, including at various PPM levels can be found in here: Thanks to Bopper for making these for me! They are a little outdated now since I have changed how my formula generates minimum proc rates (that yellow vertical line on the left is showing that if you have a power which has a base recharge of 1 second then your "effective PPM" would go crazy, even though 1 base recharge powers dont exist to my knowledge I toned the minimums down anyway). To interpret these graphs you read off the color of the co-ordinates that you are interested in. That said there isnt much difference in single target effective rates as you can see, mostly all that happens is there is a small "sweetspot" in the 12s to 14s base recharge range which gets put back in line under my system, and then there is a triangular "sourspot" cutting into the yellow area in the 16s to 30s base recharge range which also gets put back into line. Note that most of this graph shows data which is largely irrelevant, since almost all single target powers have base recharges in the 1s to 15s range. I couldnt even think of a single target power with a recharge over 32s until Bopper mentioned spirit ward! Sorry to say that im still waiting for Bopper to get back to me with the AOE graphs, they are a bit more complicated because of the varying radiuses and target caps that they have. However I can run you through some scenarios with fireball, ill do that here: Current System - Fireball: 0% Enhancement, 0% Global: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 36.9%. Power can be used every 17 seconds. An effective proc rate of 20.83 PPM, this is 5.95x the listed value. 100% Enhancement, 0% Global: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 19.5%. Power can be used every 9 seconds. An effective proc rate of 20.83 PPM, this is 5.95x the listed value. 0% Enhancement, 200% Global: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 36.9%. Power can be used every 6.33 seconds. An effective proc rate of 55.93 PPM, this is 15.98x the listed value. 100% Enhancement, 200% Global: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 19.5%. Power can be used every 5 seconds. An effective proc rate of 37.51 PPM, this is 10.72x the listed value. Proposed System - Fireball: 0% Global, 16 Targets Hit: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 20.5% Power can be used every 17 seconds. An effective proc rate of 11.59 PPM, this is 3.31x the listed value. 0% Global, 8 Targets Hit: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 28.2% Power can be used every 17 seconds. An effective proc rate of 7.95 PPM this is 2.27x the listed value. 0% Global, 2 Targets Hit: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 59.9% Power can be used every 17 seconds. An effective proc rate of 4.23 PPM this is 1.2x the listed value. 150% Global, 16 Targets Hit: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 20.5% Power can be used every 7.4 seconds. An effective proc rate of 26.64 PPM, this is 7.6x the listed value. 150% Global, 8 Targets Hit: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 28.2% Power can be used every 7.4 seconds. An effective proc rate of 18.27 PPM, this is 5.22 the listed value. 150% Global, 2 Targets Hit: Proc chance with a 3.5 PPM proc is 59.9% Power can be used every 7.4 seconds. An effective proc rate of 9.72 PPM this is 2.78x the listed value. Note when I say 100% enhancement, 200% global that would mean 300% in total. I also only go to 150% global under my proposed system because after that the lockout would kick in. As you see the ratios of the effective proc rates and the listed proc rates are much less egregious under the L.D.A.F system. You can also see how the proc chances increase the less targets you hit, but that this still results in less overall value than if you had hit more targets.

@Vooded I was waiting for someone to bring this up ^^ Here is my defense! My lockout times are actually really short, if you have +150% or less recharge bonus it wont even be possible for them to effect you! So if you do a similar build plan to right now, if you want to allocate say 80% recharge to set bonuses and 70% from hasten to max up to your +150%, then dont put any recharge in the powers you want to proc out and they will be lockout-immune so to speak. The reason it's designed like this is so that the majority of the time while playing people wont even notice the difference between this system and the lockout system (when it comes to single target powers anyway), but in those situations where there is ageless destinys and speed boosts and whatnot being thrown around then it kicks in as a kind of abuse protection. So you mention being able to circumvent the system through a rotation of powers, but that is actually totally intended! The only thing this abuse-protection is for really is to stop you from spamming the "best" procced out power or two out of your rotation over and over. However, in those aforementioned situations where your recharge gets boosted a lot - if you happen to reach the cap of 400% then a nice situation will happen! That situation is, if you fire your power on cooldown then it will alternate cleanly between proc-lockedout and free to proc. That's because the lockout kicks in when you're at 2/5 base recharge and a capped recharge bonus puts you at 1/5 base recharge. @nzer Do you have a suggested pair of values for L and E? I tried basing my comparison table around the ones you had set to default, but since proc rate caps at 90% they barely do anything, just increasing the base recharge needed to cap rate from 14.5 seconds to 17.

Hey all! I've been thinking about this since Captain Powerhouse posted about this too, and I've come up with a replacement implementation (with a lot of feedback from @Bopper) which I think answers the most problems whilst creating the least new ones. The premise for the implementation is this: Procs now have a lockout time which applies when they “roll”, this happens regardless of whether the proc activates or not. This lockout time applies to all procs in a power once it kicks in, and prevents them from "rolling" whilst it is in effect. The lockout time is small however, being only 40% of the base recharge of the power. Animation + (Base Recharge /2.5) ) The second part of the implementation is in regards to area factor. I have changed this to be both more aggressive, and anti-scale against recharge. This doesn't prevent proc rates in AOE's from reaching 90% eventually, but it takes a base recharge of over 90 seconds to accomplish that now instead of only the ~40 seconds it does in the current implementation. This new area factor also throws out the use of the radius and cone of the AOE, and instead uses the number of targets that were actually just hit. The formula is as follows: Max( ( 0.1 + PPM / 25 ), ((Base Recharge/1+Animation) * PPM ) /60) / ( 1+( Targets ^1/3 -1 ) * Base Recharge ^1/3 ) Thanks to the area factor now being based on the number of targets you actually hit, if you only hit a few enemies with your AOE then you will only be punished by an area factor proportional to that. Of course that means that if you only hit one single enemy with your AOE, you will get proc chances as if you were using a single target power against a single target. You may notice a few other changes in the formula above. First the minimum proc rates are using a different formula and this makes them more generous than they are now, however these minimum rates are divided by the area factor. This means there are different minimum rates depending on whether you are using a single target or AOE power, and also how many enemies you happened to hit with that AOE. Secondly, proc rates being reduced by enhanced recharge has been removed from the formula. Since the introduction of lockout times means that you will be constrained to not have your procs fire more often than a certain interval regardless, there is no need for some types of recharge to reduce proc rates while other types of recharge do not. I am aware that users in this thread have posted several competing ideas for implementations, and I have devised a table that compares the various implementations people have suggested against various criteria, see below: Proposal -> Current L.D.A.F Flat Rate B.E.P.C 50% Cap Global MRT Nzer's Can you have fun proc-bursting high recharge single target powers? Yes Yes No Yes No Rarely Yes Can you abuse proc-bursting with high recharge AOE powers? Yes No No Yes No Rarely Mostly Can you have fun proc-lotterying low recharge single target powers? No Yes Yes No No No No Can you abuse proc-lotterying low recharge AOE powers? No No Yes (!) No* No No No Do all forms of recharge affect the player equally? No Yes Yes No No Yes No Do external recharge buffs punish the player's proc chances? No No No No No Yes (!) No How is burst damage affected compared to currently? No Effect No Effect Huge Nerf Huge Buff (!!) Nerf Nerf Small Nerf How far can PPM be abused for single target powers? Up to 5x Up to 2.5x At least 2.16x No Abuse Up to 5x No Abuse Up to 5x How far can PPM be abused for AOE powers? Up to 29.7x (!!) Up to 8.28x At least 12.5x Up to 5.95x Up to 29.7x (!!) Up to 5.95x Up to 28.8x (!!) How easy is the system to understand at a basic level? Easy Easy Very Easy Hard Easy Easy Moderate To explain a few things about this table: L.D.A.F is the implementation I'm proposing here, it stands for Lockout and Dynamic Area Factor. B.E.P.C is an idea of Bopper's, it stands for Background Enhancement Period Cycling 50% Cap comes from @Caulderone and means using the current formula but with 50% as the cap instead of 90% Global MRT means to use all recharge to reduce proc rates, not just enhancement recharge. It may seem odd to some people why some of these criteria exist. For example why is it a good thing to be able to proc-burst with long recharge powers, or proc-lottery with short recharge powers? My answer to that is, these things must not be entangled with the balance connotations that they have, the balance of the system is assessed in other criteria in the table. While it is true that any system that allows proc-burst is likely to have procs being overall stronger than a system that does not, it isn't certain that the one property is dependent on the other. In fact this L.D.A.F implementation I am proposing is such a system that actually allows such things but at the same time makes procs weaker overall. So knowing that, including the ability to do these things as criteria is based around the fact that both of them are fun! Another question people may have is, where did I pull the numbers for this table? For example how do I know that under the current system on a single target power you can exceed the PPM rating of your proc by a factor of 5 times? Or that in an AOE power you can exceed the PPM rating of your proc by a factor of 29.7 times! The answer to the first question is simple, its possible to reach a +400% recharge bonus, which will lower your base recharge to 1/5 of its normal amount. It is possible to do this without lowering your proc rates if it is achieved with recharge set bonuses, powers like hasten and other buffs from your teammates. So the maximum effective proc rate you can achieve is 5 times your PPM in the current system. For AOE's, first we take the PPM rating and imagine it as being equal to 1 (as in 100% of itself), and then divide that by the area factor of an assumed AOE. Then we multiply that number by the amount of targets you just hit, and then we use the same logic regarding recharge as previously. If anybody has questions about how any of the other conclusions was arrived at in the table above, please ask and I will explain! Also if anyone thinks there are criteria I left out then please mention this as well and I will consider if it is worthy of adding. Finally, I know that I have left some user's ideas for implementations out, like @nzer who seemed to have a good one! It will take me a bit more time to think about how the implementation works and how it meets or fails to meet the various criteria, but ill try and get around to it soon. *Edit: This is done, though I had to make some assumptions about how he wanted it implemented. So with all that out the way, I believe L.D.A.F has the best potential of the various competitors considering it's positive to negative criteria ratio as shown above. It is also possible to tweak the system in several ways if they are considered to be problematic, and I will go into that now. First there are the minimums, that is defined by this part of the formula: Max( ( 0.1 + PPM / 25 ) I decided to make these more generous because I have heard sentiment in various places from people who miss being able to “proc-lottery” their quick recharge powers, shadow punch on dark melee seems to be the go-to example. Since the overall effect of L.D.A.F is to reduce the abuse-ability of PPM by half for single target powers, and by over two thirds for AOE powers, it seemed safe to me to make these minimums more generous. However if this turns out not to be the case then it is perfectly fixable by tweaking this portion of the formula, without impacting any of the other benefits that L.D.A.F brings. Next there is the area factor, that is defined by this part of the formula: / ( 1+( Targets ^1/3 -1 ) * Base Recharge ^1/3 ) Here I use cube roots, as you see the two variables involved are the Target count you just hit with your AOE, and the Base Recharge of that AOE. Even though these are cube roots, another way to look at them is by raising to the power of 0.33333, so in that respect they are very tweak-able! In fact this area factor can be as punishing or lenient as desired, and not only that but you can decide whether it is the anti-scaling on recharge you want to change (so that it takes a longer recharge AOE to reach the same proc rate for example), or the targets factor (so that each additional target you hit with an AOE reduces the proc rate by more or less than currently). One concern that @Bopper raised to me regarding this area factor was it might be difficult for the CoH game engine to process these cube roots. However I think this problem can probably be worked around neatly by using look-up tables which have the varying target and recharge numbers plugged in. This is possible because there are only 15 (16-1) target possibilities, and only a few numbers that are used for AOE base recharge values for example 16s, 20s and 60s are common ones. So creating a look-up table here seems entirely feasible if the computational ability of the engine isn't up to the task. Finally we have the lockout formula, ill re-paste here: Animation + (Base Recharge /2.5) You will notice the number 2.5 conspicuously standing out in this formula. This is what I like to refer to as the “leniency factor”. If this number was set to 1, then getting an effective PPM rate that was above the PPM rating of your proc would be impossible. Another way to think about it is that the lockout time would be set to be exactly the same as the amount of time it takes for you to recharge your power and use it again when you don't have any +recharge at all. By setting this number to 2.5, this allows players to get up to +150% recharge from any combination of sources they want (enhancements, hasten, set bonuses, team-mate buffs) before they have to worry about the lockout period. This is where I happen to think the sweet-spot is in order to reap the various advantages listed in the table above, but if the devs disagree then tweaking this “leniency factor” is also an easy dial to turn. Edit: I realised I neglected to describe how these changes would function in toggles, "patches" and chain attacks. So ill do that here: For chain attacks there are two options for implementation: A: Have the procs not fire until the whole chain is completed and the "Targets" number for the dynamic area factor acquired. B: Estimate an "average" number of targets. This could be a fixed proportion of the total potential targets. For Toggles: Firstly, lockout time would be coded in such a way that it does not lockout procs from "rolling" multiple times in a single use of a power. Instead the lockout time would apply to future uses of that same power. So for example, if you have an Obliteration:Chance for Smashing Damage proc in your Lightning Field, and you turn Lightning Field on and leave it on, then you may proc that Obliteration as many times as you like as frequently as the chances allow with no lockout ever kicking in. However there IS still a lockout period being applied, it is just applying to future uses of the Lightning Field power! So if you turn Lightning field on and off over and over in a group of enemies, you will get put in lockout as soon as the Obliteration proc "rolls" for the first time, and Lightning Field will be put in proc lockout for 4 seconds (because lightning field has a 10 second base recharge). So to sum that up, lockout pretty much doesnt effect toggles as long as you use them as they are intended (dont spam turning them off and on). Because the L.D.A.F system uses a dynamic area factor which depends on the number of targets hit, for AOE toggles this will be recalculated once every "interval" which is when you turn the toggle on and every 10 seconds afterwards. There is already a system in place that only allows toggles to proc once per interval, and L.D.A.F would not touch this. For AOE "rains/patches": Currently the way these work is on initial cast and every 10 seconds thereafter they roll their procs based on as if the power had a recharge time of 10 seconds. The amount of these 10 second "intervals" is known beforehand (eg. in a 15 second rain you get 2, one at 0 seconds and one at 10 seconds), so the way they work under the L.D.A.F system will go like this: First, the proc chance is calculated without calcualting an "area factor" (so as if the power was a single target power). Then that proc chance is divided by the number of total "intervals" that the patch is already known to have. Each "interval" the number of targets in the patch being hit is determined, which in turn determines the area factor under the L.D.A.F system. The divided proc chances are then divided again by this area factor for this "interval", and then the procs are rolled. (fire off, or dont). For each seperate "interval" that the rain/patch has, the area factor is recalculated and the procs "roll" for that interval is based on the area factor calculation for that interval. Because lockout does not apply to procs "rolling" multiple times in a single use of a power, but to future casts of that same power, it is possible (although of course far from guaranteed) to have a single proc fire off on each "interval" in the rain/patch's duration. Overall you get the same total chance as in a normal AOE but split over however many intervals there are in that particular power. The final difference to the current system is that the actual recharge of the "patch/rain" is used, rather than assuming that the recharge time is 10 seconds. Those 10 second "intervals" are kept however to be used for proc application. Here is an example of how it would work for the power "Ice Storm", slotted with a Positron's Blast chance for energy damage. First the single target rate for bonfire is calculated, which would be 362% (because we dont cap it to 90% yet) Then that chance is divided by the total number of "intervals" that "Ice Storm" has, which is 2 (at 0s, and 10s) making 181% Assume that when the player casts Ice Storm that there are 10 targets within the AOE. That means on the first interval, (interval 0s) the area factor is 5.51 Now we know the area factor for the first interval we can divide 181% by that. So that gives us 32.8% So when you first cast the Ice Storm the 10 enemies in the AOE each have a 32% chance of getting hit by the Positron's Blast proc. Now we calculate the area factor again for the second interval. Let's assume that by this point 10 seconds later most of the enemies have died, and there are only 3 left in the AOE. So for this second interval the area factor is 2.73 Dividing 181% by this new area factor gives us 66% So those last three remaining enemies in the AOE by the time 10 seconds have passed each have a 66% chance to take another hit of the Positron's blast proc. A changelog based on feedback from Bopper, for the curious:

Reading through the new name and mechanics of Dark Equilibrium gave me an idea for a bit of flavor, split the damage into two instances; the one scaling off endurance could be energy and one scaling off damage bonus negative energy. Of course it would be very rare to get your damage bonus just right so the two damage instances matched in numbers floating above enemies heads, but still be a fun bit of flavor nevertheless, and as an added plus might help new players understand better the seperate scaling mechanics when they see it in action.

Over the course of the game's history level 50 content in CoX has been trivialised, hopefully this is an uncontested fact. The central causes for this also I would expect not to be in dispute, those being the IO system introduced in issue 9, and the Incarnate system added much later starting in issue 19. Comparing the two, the IO system offers many ways to kit out your character, allowing you to take on different roles with the same power-sets. It has a level of depth that can have users spending hours planning every slot and set bonus if they so wish. Additionally since for the most part set bonuses are passive stat boosts, the feel of the power-sets is not deviated from no matter what manner of build the player is aiming for. My feeling on this system is that any power creep that resulted from its implementation was well worth it for the depth it added to the game. On the other hand there is the Incarnate system. Barring the Alpha slot, each other incarnate ability is its own independent effect, tacked on and often at odds with the concept or theme that players had for their character when they conceived it. These effects are both far less customisable than IO's, while at the same time their immense value or power overshadow the player's chosen power-sets. If the difficulty of end game content is to be restored through the tweaking of either of these systems, it is my opinion it should be the latter. To show how I would go about this please see the following images: This one is just for reference and shows an example of what a fully slotted set of incarnates looks like currently. These two images show how my proposal would work. To explain, there would be three rows of mutually exclusive incarnate powers. They would be arranged as shown above so that Alpha and Interface compete, Hybrid and Lore compete, & Destiny and Judgement compete. By slotting an incarnate power into one of the slots on a row, the other slot will become disabled and greyed out as shown above. Unslotting an incarnate power will re-enable both slots on that row and enable a player to change their choice at any time. The benefits of this system are an increased level of character customization whilst at the same time decreasing overall power. Thematically many issues with the current system are also resolved by choosing the mutual exclusions in this layout, the main ones being a character that does not want to be about summoning pets can now take Hybrid and thus avoid Lore, a character based around being a support can take Destiny and avoid having to take Judgement, and conversely a character that is most certainly not supposed to be about support thematically can take Judgement and avoid Destiny. This layout of mutual exclusions also lines up nicely with the power level of the incarnate powers in question, in terms of incarnate-stomping your way through task forces and trials the Judgement and Destiny powers stand out as the worst offenders, so they are made exclusive at the highest tier. Alpha and Interface on the other hand are relatively unoffensive more passively oriented buffs so are made exclusive at the lowest tier. With the system above, a small number of additional changes would need to be made in order to create parity for each exlusive pair. Alpha would no longer provide a level boost. This helps create power-level parity with interface and removes the most unnesscary part of the incarnate system at the same time. Interface would no longer "cancel on miss". Combined with the previous change this should bring power-level parity with Alpha. Hybrid recharge increased to 3 mins. This would give it a 50% uptime instead of 60% and close its power-gap with Lore. Destiny and Judgement recharge increased to 3 mins. Simply to lower their strength. And thats it! Critique welcome.

Making a quick follow-up post to address a couple of things related in particular to the resistance tweaks I proposed. The first is to demonstrate that the curve tweak will make Tough attractive but not mandatory on Blasters, but meta on Defenders and Controllers. Second, regarding suggestions I've seen between this thread and the discord regarding increasing the maximum health for 1606 archetypes up to 1847 to match the buff that was given to Blasters, I believe that my tweaks accomplish a lot of what this change is intended to do already, and will attempt to prove that here. To make my points I have drafted up three tables, these show what effective health would be achieved under the current system and the two proposals. The Pre-DR resistance values were arrived at by putting 3 resistance IO's into the archetype's epic res toggle, and then adding 10% to that total to account for things like the Shield Wall proc, Reactive Defences proc, as well as other miscellaneous +Res bonuses. Calculations can be found by clicking the hyperlinks embedded in the tables. The “Difference” column shows the Effective Health difference between the entity on that row, and a typical Blaster under the current system. Current Values: Archetype/Build Health Resistance Effective Health Difference Blaster (Typical) 1847 41.1 3136 0.00% Blaster (Tough) 1847 43.8 3286 +4.78% Defender (Typical) 1606 43.3 2832 -9.69% Defender (Tough) 1606 45.1 2925 -6.73% Values under increased HP proposal: Archetype/Build Health Resistance Effective Health Difference Defender (Typical) 1847 43.3 3258 +3.89% Defender (Tough) 1847 45.1 3364 +7.27% Values under my DR curve tweaks: Archetype/Build Health Resistance Effective Health Difference Blaster (Typical) 1847 40.0 3078 -1.85% Blaster (Tough) 1847 49.6 3665 +16.87% Defender (Typical) 1606 45.4 2941 -6.21% Defender (Tough) 1606 53.8 3473 +10.75% So first up, to show that tough will be attractive but won't be mandatory on Blasters, we can see that under the new system, it will grant the user with 9.6% resistance after DR. This increases effective health from 3078 to 3665, a total net survivability boost of 19%. Since Blasters are pressed for pool powers, with Speed and Leaping being mandatory, Leadership being highly valued as well as Concealment for its free Lotg's, Karmas and Phase Shift also being very attractive, Tough will not outclass these options since for that 9.6% resistance you must both drop one of these high value pools, as well pick up a useless melee attack which also has limited use as a set-bonus mule on the way to aquiring Tough. For my second point; showing that my res tweaks already accomplish much of what the health buff is supposed to, it is important to remember that tough and epic resistance toggles do not grant the same amount of resistance to all Archetypes, under the current system this basically doesn't matter at all since all Squishies are granted +40% free resistance, and are therefore pushed right onto the plateau of the curve regardless of how much resistance their epic toggles give. Under my new system however this is no longer the case, the values of these toggles matters a lot. It is for this reason that Defenders and Controllers in particular close the EHP gap dramatically under my new system, especially when using Tough. To illustrate what I mean, you can see that currently a Defender with Tough is still less survivable than a Blaster without Tough, under my system this changes completely. You can also see that comparing the health buff to my proposal, you can achieve more Effective health under my proposal than through the Health Buff, (3473 compared with 3364) provided you make the investment in your build. This investment is also an easier thing to make when in support roles at least Leadership is not so mandatory, which is why we see things like Sorcery and Medicine pools often being picked up right now. So to cut to the heart of it, I don't think the health buff to all 1606's is compatible with my resistance curve tweaks, and I also don't think it is compatible with any potential other resistance curve tweak that could be devised. However since my tweaks do not help Dominators and Corruptors nearly so much as they help Defenders and Controllers, I think it could still be a good idea to hand out this buff to either just those two, or depending on if a protection based Mez system is implemented which would likely make Dominators viable without the buff, just Corruptors.

>What needs to be Adjusted? Im only going to be addressing this point in this post, rather than focusing on set specific tweaks like what power sets might be over-tuned or under-tuned, I think that first some systemic issues need to be resolved mostly with the way DR was implemented for the majority of archetypes, as I will explain below. Problem 1: Resistance buffs dont work. Or to be more precise about it, they dont work when applied to Blasters, Controllers, Defenders, Corruptors, Dominators, Masterminds or Sentinels. They do work when applied to other archetypes, and that is due to the different diminishing return curve values that those archetypes get applied to them. To illustrate what I mean here is the graph showing the ratio of pre-DR and post-DR resistance on a Defender, and here is another graph showing the same ratio on a Scrapper. Its hard to get a feel for what this does without ingame pvp experience but basically it caps “squishy” archetypes to about 43% - 48% resistance. You may be wondering, why is this a problem at all? After all they are supposed to be squishy! Well for a start, as things stand right now every new player who tries to get into pvp must undergo the learning process that yes it is a good idea to get a resistance toggle, but no it isnt a good idea to try and get any more resistance beyond a certain point, as the returns fall off to almost zero at a certain arbitrary point which is impossible to know about unless you know the DR curve, but that's just an aside. The primary reason is that there are sets revolving around buffing of resistance namely sonic and thermal and right now those +resistance buffs pretty much dont do anything. So to fix this problem, the DR curves need to be manipulated in such a way as to make squishies as close to as they are now with their own res toggle active, but still able to get more resistance if for example a sonic were to buff them. In other words stacking their epic resistance toggle, a ton of +resistance set bonuses, and tough all together should not result in a defender beginning to approach scrapper levels of surviveability, while at the same time the +resistance from a sonic buff still needs to give a reasonable boost in effective health. Striking this balance has been tricky but after a lot of messing around with the values, these are the results I suggest: AT Old A & B New A & B Old Free Res New Free Res Sentinels 1.20 & 1.00 1.60 & 0.75 10% 0% Squishies 1.20 & 1.00 1.40 & 0.75 40% 20% PB & WS 0.90 & 1.00 1.20 & 0.75 15% 15% Bane & Widow 0.90 & 1.00 1.20 & 0.75 10% 10% Masterminds 1.80 & 1.00 2.80 & 0.75 0% 0% Tankers 0.80 & 1.00 0.85 & 0.75 0% 0% Melees 0.60 & 1.00 0.85 & 0.75 10% 10% Explaining why these numbers: Currently, the resistance for a squishy before and after DR looks something like this. In the link above, the “R” value shows pre-diminished resistance. The reason it is set to 0.835 is that with the current values of 40% free resistance and between 30% and 43.5% for epic toggles, squishies can get up to around 83.5% resistance before DR.* As you can see, with “A” and “B” values of 1.2 and 1.0, this diminishes down to 41.7% (shown by the result: 0.416969) *Yes 83.5% is the scenario with the highest res toggles, but it doesn’t factor +res set bonuses so this balances out. Now let us apply some theoretical Defender Sonic Resonance buffs to this squishy. It will look something like this. The “R” value is increased from 0.85 to 1.152 because sonic resonance buffs give 31.7% with 3 resistance IO’s in them. Looking at the result, you can see that the squishies resistance has gone from 41.7% previously to 45.9% now. So how effective was the sonic buff? Assuming a squishy has 1600 health and 41.7% resistance, they have 2744 effective health. (1600/(1-0.417)) With the sonic buff active they have 45.9% resistance so they have an effective health of 2957 (1600/(1-0.459)) Comparing the effective health before and after we can see that the sonic buff increased it by about 7.7%. (2957/2744) When I said previously that res buffs pretty much don't do anything, this ~7.7% EHP buff is what I was referring to. Now we take the changes from the above table and reapply the math. So the first situation now looks like this. The new value of “R” of 0.635 is because the free resistance has been dropped from 40% to 20%. The new values of “A” and “B” are 1.4 and 0.75, which brings the amount of resistance after DR to 41.5%, so more or less identical to what it was before. Applying the Defender Sonic Resonance buffs under the new curve gives this result. Now we compare the effective health again. The initial effective health this time is 2735. (1600/(1-0.415)) Adding the sonic buff increases the effective health to 3408 (1600/(1-0.5305)) for an increase in effective health of 24.6%. (3408/2735) So why these numbers? The value for “A” defines how aggressively the curve seeks out the ultimate determinant of where the plateau is, “B”. Smaller values for A and B are less aggressive, as in they DR less. Looking at the table above you can see that generally A has been made higher and B lower, an example of this effect shown here: On the left is the curve produced by the squishy values currently in the game, 1.2 and 1.0. On the right is the curve produced by the suggested values, 1.4 and 0.75. As you can see the curve on the right does steadily become more aggressive, but does not plateau completely like the current curve does. This is because by setting “B” at 0.75 the maximum amount your resistance can diminish by is now 75%, meaning that once you have reached the final slope of the curve, you get one point of resistance in pvp for every four points you accrue before DR. The values for “A” are designed to counteract the changes in “B” up until a certain point, to maintain the current resistance values that an AT can achieve on their own without buffs from others, it is this fact that is key to the successful implementation of these curve changes. Note: While changes are made to the DR curves of non-squishy AT's such as scrappers and tankers, these changes are made for the consistency of the “B” value. For Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers this pretty much changes nothing from a balance perspective, to see this for yourself, if you plot the old curve against the new one in these instances, they pretty much overlap. For Epic AT's I have been a slight bit more generous due to how badly all of these AT's underperform, or at least I claim they do, I hope you can get some testimony from other members of the pvp community to back me up on that. For sentinels in order to keep them in line with their current curve there was not enough free resistance to subtract, so even though they currently share an "A" value with squishies a more harsh one was needed to keep the curve the same when balancing around the new "B" value. Problem 2: Defense buffs dont work. The same design philosophy that went into designating the resistance DR curves seemingly was also implemented into defense DR curves, this time to an even greater extent. Here is the ratio of Pre-DR and post-DR defense on a squishy, and here it is on a scrapper. This causes an effective post-DR cap of 20% for squishies, and 60% for melee's. What's absolutely crazy about this change is that in addition to sharing the problems about learning the system for newcomers, as well as neutering sets that give defense buffs such as Cold Domination, and Force Field, is that Sentinels are also lumped in with the squishies on the 3.00 value for “A”, meaning that for example a Super-Reflexes Sentinel will have his defense diminished to about 19% normally, and then when using their T9 power Elude, that will increase their defense to... 20%. Similarly to my methodolgy in tweaking the resistance curves, the DR curves need to be manipulated so that the self-defense buffs that squishies can grant to themselves cant be allowed to get out of hand, but the defense buffs that other players grant to them still needs to do something. Since elusivity also exists in pvp, some values need to be tweaked here to compensate for the more generous defense curves. AT Old A & B New A & B Squishies 3.00 & 1.00 1.60 & 1.00 Sentinels 3.00 & 1.00 1.30 & 1.00 EpicsATs 1.50 & 1.00 1.30 & 1.00 Melees 0.99 & 1.00 0.99 & 1.00 Elusivity Additions: Force Field, Deflection Shield: +5% Force Field, Insulation Shield: +5% Force Field, Dispersion Bubble: +5% Cold Domination, Ice Shield: +5% Cold Domination, Glacial Shield: +5% Tank, Brute & Scrapper’s Super Reflexes, Elude: +20% Scrapper’s Ninjitsu, Kuji-In Retsu: +20% Elusivity Subtractions: Force Field, Personal Force Field: -15% Force Mastery, Personal Force Field: -15% Mace Mastery, Personal Force Field: -15% Mace Mastery, Scorpion Shield: -5% Cold Mastery, Frozen Armor: -5% Stalker & Sentinel’s Energy Aura, Overload: -20% Elusivity is to be applied to the move/damage types that the defense applies to, for example on Deflection Shield the elusivity is granted to Smashing, Lethal and Melee. As an aside, a glaring inconsistency in the game right now is that the tier 9 power Overload power grants +20% elusivity whilst the other Tier-9 defense powers Elude and Kuji-In Retsu grant none whatsoever. The above proposal changes that divide so that all defense set Tier-9 powers should now grant elusivity when used by Tanks Brutes and Scrappers, but not to Stalkers and Sentinels. Explaining why these numbers: Unlike resistance, the value of defense is relative. Due to this, it is necessary for this explanation to draw up some typical values for a would-be attacker. The values I have decided to use for the hypothetical attacker are a bonus accuracy of +125%* and a Tohit of +15%**. In order to demonstrate what the changes above do, this “typical attacker” will be pitted against a blaster with Frozen Armor. * +75% from enhancements and +50% from set bonuses. ** From tactics. First the stats of both the attacker and the attacked need to be made subject to DR: The +125% accuracy of the attacker diminishes to +100%. (Link) The +15% to-hit of the attacker diminishes to +12% (Link) The +16.84% defense of the Blaster diminishes to +11.8% (Link) Our first result looks like this, meaning Frozen Armor was giving the Blaster a 10% chance to evade the attacker. Assuming the Blaster had 1847 Health, this means their effective Health was 2932 assuming 30% resistance. ((1847/0.9)/0.7) Now we apply Deflection and Insulation Shield to our Blaster. Under the current system, applying these buffs on top of Frozen Armor diminishes from 40.57% down to 17.8% as shown here. Now we run our typical attacker situation run again with this new defense total, which gives this result. The Blaster now has a 20.4% chance of evading the same attacker, giving an effective health of 3314.7. ((1847/0.796)/0.7) This is an effective health increase of 13% (3314.7/2932). Now we make all the same calculations under the new system. The typical attacker remains the same so the first thing to check is the new degree to which Frozen Armor’s defense diminishes, which looks like this. Knowing that, we can run the typical attacker calculation again, giving this result. As you see the Blaster’s chance of evading when running Frozen Armor alone is now around 9%.* Making their effective health 2893. *Yes, this does mean Frozen Armor becomes weaker than currently, however please bear in mind it is less punishing under my system to stack additional defense buffs such as set bonuses, Stealth, Maneuvers, etc. Applying Deflection and Insulation Shields again under the new system, these buffs on top of frozen armor now diminish from 40.57% down to 25.7% as shown here. Running our typical attacker calculation one final time, we see that with the forcefield shields on, the Blaster now has a 34.6% chance of evading, as shown here. This gives an effective health of 4038 ((1847/0.626)/0.7) Which is an effective health increase of 39.5% (4038/2893). The reason why I bring sonic resonance buffs up to 24.6% effective health increase but show here against the “typical attacker” that the forcefield buffs give a much larger 39.5% effective health increase is because of the relativistic nature of defense. To demonstrate what I mean, if the “typical attacker” uses Aim the hit chance goes right back up to the clamped cap of 95% as shown here. Problem 3: Mez Prior to issue 13 mez durations mirrored those in pve, and followed a protection based system. This was subsequently changed in issue 13 to a new system in which protection is converted to resistance in pvp, and mez durations were shortened at the same time, after which you are given a short period of Mez Immunity. This new system has proven itself to be quite unpopular, the reason being that now there is no definitive answer to being mezzed and since spikes only take about 2 seconds anyway that is all the duration it takes for you to be incapacitated for in order for you to die. Under the old protection based mez system however, you can simply pop a Break-Free to escape the hold and potentially survive the spike. For that reason I think a lot of players would like to shift back to something like the old system. With all that said though, there are some issues to going back to exactly the way mez worked before i13. The reasons for that are, firstly in issue 13 all attacks were given bonus damage. The relative increase of this bonus damage was not equal across all AT’s. For example a Blaster’s Flares increases from 63.19 damage in pve, to 110.10 damage in pvp, this is an increase of around +74%. In comparison however a Dominator’s Flares increases from 46.37 in pve to 105.5 in pvp, for an increase of around +128%. Secondly, with the advent of the PPM system, proc damage makes up a significant portion of the total damage that players deal to eacother, this additional flat damage makes the total damage potential of each archetype closer in relative terms. The reason this matters is that since the relative increase in damage was in general higher for dominators and controllers, therefore reverting their mez durations back to pve values would overtune them. With that in mind I have been considering and revising a system over the last few months which I believe could strike the needed balance, that system is as follows: It is protection based, if the magnitude exceeds your protection you are mezzed. Mez immunity after being mezzed is removed. Current magnitudes are kept. (Including mag 4’s). Current pvp durations are kept. Resistance toggles now give protection. (Rather they simply mirror what they do in pve). The following hard Mez types now take an order of severity: 1: Hold 2: Disorient 4: Terrorize 3: Sleep 4: Immobilize 5: Confuse Caveat #1: After being mezzed by a mez type listed above for 4 seconds, the affected player is granted a protection buff to that mez and all other listed mez types which are considered to have a lower severity, this starts at 2 and increases by 2 for each second that the player remains mezzed up to a maximum of 10. (reached at 8 seconds mezzed). Similarly, for each second that a player is not mezzed this protection buff then decreases at the same rate. With this system players have a means to escape but it is also theoretically possible to Mez someone permanently if you can stack enough of it by yourself.* *Due to Caveat #2. Caveat #2: Mez stacks from multiple sources are taken separately and compared. The highest stack of mez is applied and the other stacks are ignored. This means if only one person is stacking mez on you then things go as normal. If another person then comes along and stacks mez on you as well, then either his extra stack of mez will be ignored if it is weaker, or take over as the mez being applied to you if it is stronger. This is done separately for each mez type. The following Blaster and Sentinel primary set mezzes are limited to mag 2: Lancer Shot Abyssal Gaze Freeze Ray Bitter Freeze Ray Will Domination Cosmic Burst All Sentinel protection toggles have values reduced from 8.3 in pve to 5.0 in pvp, allowing them to take two mag 2 holds or one mag 4 hold without being mezzed. The Protection values given by destiny Clarion powers are are no longer converted into resistance in PvP, instead they remain as protection but are reduced by a factor of 3. This is to balance around Clarion Core Epiphany, which gives 30 Prot for the first 30 seconds, 9 prot for the first minute, and 6 prot for the full duration in PvE, so would give 10 Prot for the first 30 seconds, 3 prot for the first minute, and 2 prot for the full duration in PvP. In conjunction with Acrobatics this will allow for protection against a single mag 4 hold, but not be sufficient to protect against stacked mag 3 or mag 4 holds. Explanation of methodolgy: Caveat #1 is designed to replace the immunity effect that is currently implemented in the game with a much more lenient and flexible system. The first implication of Caveat #1 is that a single mag 2 hold can’t last longer than 4 seconds and a single mag 3 or 4 hold can’t last longer than 5 seconds. This is not an arbitrarily imposed pair of rules but two implications of one system which happens to perfectly hit desirable values. Another implication is that when mezzes are stacked to create higher magnitudes, the maximum duration that can be reached also increases as a consequence. For example if you stack two mag 2 holds, you can now keep your target held for 5 seconds instead of 4. Extrapolating further, if you stack two mag 4 holds you can keep your target held for 7 seconds instead of 5. To see for yourself how this works observe: 1s 2s 3s 4s 5s 6s 7s 8s+ None None None 2 Prot 4 Prot 6 Prot 8 Prot 10 Prot So given this, all that is required to hold someone indefinitely is triple stacking a mag 4 hold to reach a total of 12 magnitude. However, that is against a target without the pool power Acrobatics. So what if they do have that? We will assume that a single target hold from a control set can reach 2.3s recharge time, and 9.5 seconds duration. We also assume that it takes at least 1 second for the hold animation. Given this we will say that it is possible to hold someone once every 3.5 seconds. The 9.5 second duration is also reduced by acrobatics to 6.4 seconds. (9.5/1.4844) Given all these values this is what will happen: The first hold is applied, it’s magnitude of 4 exceeds the 2 protection of the target. This first hold is due to last for 4 seconds because although its initial duration of 9.5s was reduced to 6.4 by acrobatics, the held player is going to be gaining 2 protection at the 4s mark. The second hold is then applied 3.5 seconds later. The first hold still has 2.9s of duration left at this point. (6.4 - 3.5) Half a second after that the 4s mark is hit, giving the held player the 4 prot they would have needed to break free of the first hold, however by this point it is too late since a second hold has already been applied. Five seconds pass after the first hold was applied, the held player now has a protection total of 6, still not enough protection to break out of the double stacked mag 4 holds. One second after that (Six seconds total) the player then reaches a total of 8 protection which is finally enough for them to break out. A further 0.4 seconds after that, the first hold wears off. What happens after this? Well once the target is no longer mezzed their protection immediately begins to decrease. The result of this is that if the Dominator/Controller keeps stacking their primary hold on them they will be re-held very shortly. So the overall conclusion is that it is possible to lock down a player that is running acrobatics for 6 seconds, and once that player breaks out after those 6 seconds they will still be able to be re-held very shortly afterwards. The beauty of this system though is that the Dominator/Controller has to work constantly in order to make this happen. If they apply their primary hold only once, then the target will only be held for 4 seconds, similarly, if they only apply it twice, then once the player breaks out it will be a longer time before they can be re-held afterwards. In order to keep the beauty of Caveat #1 from being abused, Caveat #2 makes it so that the benefit of cooperatively stacking mez only goes as far as covering the down time in each-other’s mez stacks. This essentially means that provided the balance in a 1 vs 1 scenario is nailed down properly by the variables set by Caveat #1, this balance will then scale up to as high an X vs X scenario as can be conceived. Finally, the order of severity is implemented so that if a player is stacking a lot of different types of mezzes on a target, for example both immobilizes and holds, then being affected by the weaker mez will not provide protection to the stronger one under any circumstances. Problem 4: Knockback requires too much counterbuilding. Compared to the others, this is a quite simple and easy to solve problem. The issue is just that in order to safeguard oneself against a power like Force Bolt, you must somehow cram into your build about 48 magnitude of knockback protection. Solving this issue through a DR curve seems like a very easy fix, and can be done for example using the following method: The value for “A” in the DR formula for Knockback Strength (Str) changes: From A = 0.33 to A = 0.8 This will increase the degree by which the enhancement slotting in powers is diminished by DR, as a result the final enhanced magnitude of those powers will be closer to their base magnitudes. Currently the highest that a knockback power can be enhanced for is +226.95%, this is when fully slotting the power using 6 level 50 basic crafted knockback IO’s, and then boosting all of them to +5. Using the current value for A in the knockback curve causes this amount of enhancement to diminish as shown here to +152.65%. Under this proposed change, the curve would be more aggressive, and instead the amount would diminish to +103.58% as shown here. Below is a table listing what values various high magnitude knockback powers reach before and after my changes. The values given are for the 6 level 50 +5 boosted basic crafted IO’s mentioned before. Note that these magnitudes are exactly the amount of protection you must exceed in order to be protected. Knockback Power Old Post-DR Magnitude New Post-DR Magnitude Defender Force Bolt 47.22 38.05 Defender Power Push 41.99 33.83 Blaster Power Push 33.58 27.06 Controller Levitate 31.48 25.36 Problem 5: -Jump. -Jump powers are ubiquitously used in zone pvp, and often banned in arena pvp, grounding a player with these abilities is easy to pull off, very rewarding in restricting their ability to both chase and escape, and due to its whopping -50,000% jump height value, impossible to counter or resist. To change this I propose the following solution which involves both toning down the severity of the values for “A” and “B” in the jump-height DR formula, whilst multiplying the -Jump value by an AT scalar. From A = 0.15 to A = 0.05 From B = 0.33 to B = 0.15 In PvE all -Jump powers do -50,000% jump height. By multiplying this value by these Archetype scalars used for various debuffs, the following new values emerge: Archetypes Post Scalar -Jump Blasters, Brutes, Scrappers & Tankers* -50,000% * 0.070 = -3,500% Dominators, Masterminds & VEATs -50,000% * 0.075 = -3,750% Peacebringers & Warshades -50,000% * 0.090 = -4,500% Controllers and Corruptors -50,000% * 0.100 = -5,000% Defenders -50,000% * 0.125 = -6,250% *Also probably sentinels if this is the scalar they inherited, additionally this scalar can be used for temp powers. Explaining why these numbers: The ubiquitously used Super Jump combined with the mandatorily used Hurdle grant from an initial combined +2946.8% jump height when unslotted, up to a combined total of +6007% when triple slotted with +5 boosted Jump IOs. In PvP, thanks to both the enhancement strength and the final total being hit by diminishing returns, this range is currently reduced to between +2112.09% and +3819.01%.* With the changes to the jump-height DR formula this difference between PvE and PvP will be less pronounced, resulting in a range of +2672.57% up to +4851.76%. *Enhancement DR looks like this, then apply that to base values and DR the resulting total like this. Since base jump height is 100% this means that the final range is 2773% to 4952%. When comparing with the table above, this shows that slotting will allow you to be able to make medium to small jumps even whilst hit by -Jump powers from Blasters, Brutes, Scrappers, Tankers, Dominators, Masterminds & Epic ATs. On the other hand, those Archetypes with better debuff scaling will exceed 4952% and still force completely land-bound movement. However since the values are still in a reasonable range, adding Internal Reduction into the mix allows players to jump once again. Problem 6: The Melee and Ranged disparity. Currently melee Archetypes are in a rather horrible place where their designated role is based around taunting enemies and throwing web grenades at them to apply -jump. The fact that this role has given these archetypes some semblance of a place in pvp does not change the truth that this should not be the only role in which they should be able to function. The thrust of what im getting at is that it is difficult to land successive melee attacks in pvp. While it is accepted that there should be some tradeoff in return for being graced with much more lenient resistance and defense DR curves which grant vastly superior surviveability, currently it is very hard for a melee to land consistent attacks against a kiting ranged character. The changes I advocate here are mild and designed to make it possible to land attacks but only if a player is focused on solely doing just that. The methodolgy is as follows: Values for “A” and “B” in the jump-speed and run-speed DR formula for Tankers, Brutes and Scrappers* change: From A = 0.15 to A = 0.10 From B = 0.55 to B = 0.35 *This change regarding the DR curve values could also affect Black/White Dwarfs if it is possible to implement those values changing on the fly when formes change. All melee attacks for Tankers, Brutes, Scrappers & Black/White Dwarfs with a range of 7 in pve get a range of 10 in pvp. (If you think this will look weird please see KO Blow with its range of 13.2). In pvp, all melee attacks for Tankers, Brutes and Scrappers & Black/White Dwarfs apply an effect which increases their running and jumping speed cap for a small duration, similar to the way the powers Afterburner and Takeoff function, but possibly not stacking with those powers. Explanation of methodolgy: The first change involving changing the values for the DR formula allows for Tankers Brutes and Scrappers to reach the speed cap easier in pvp. This change alone does not make those AT’s move faster than ranged AT’s since the speed caps are still the same, it only makes it easier to reach said caps. The third change then allows for temporary increases beyond the speed cap after using a melee attack. This means that if a scrapper is using either taunt, webnade, or even their epic ranged attacks, they will not move any faster than a ranged AT, although they will be able to hit the speed cap with less investment in their build. However if that scrapper then decides to try and land a melee attack, that will then give them an increase in speed which can help them to land subsequent melee attacks. Since the range on all their melee attacks goes from 7 to 9 this initial attack is also easier to land. The upshot of these three changes is that it will be much easier for melee AT’s to land their melee attacks, as well as chase down enemies that ranged AT’s could not. These two factors will make melee AT’s more threatening and consistent in their damage output without having to rely so heavily on ranged attacks from their epic pool to do so. This also means that melee AT’s will no longer have to rely so heavily on their current gimmick of taunting to be relevant, but at the same time will not significantly buff a melee character designed with taunting in mind. Note: It may be tempting to consider potential alternatives to this proposal such as having melee attacks apply a slow to enemies or something like that. While such an effect may appear at first glance to achieve the same results, the key difference is that slowing an enemy down makes it easier for all your ranged allies to catch up to that enemy again rather than just you. I do not reccomend this. Additional Misc changes i'd like to see: Show Post DR stats in combat attributes for all stats not just some. Remove the “Area Factor” from pvp AOEs and Cones. The idea that an area of effect on a power would yield additional value from that ability was just a complete lack of understanding on the initial developer's part. Usually people are around 50 to 350 feet from eachother at all times, and usually closer to the 350 side at that! A radius of 15 or 20 doesnt change a power's expected number of targets hit in pvp, it always just hits one.* *Excluding very specific circumstances in which people gather for certain high value buffs briefly and then disperse. Fix the Clamp, raising the hit chance limit from 95% to 100%. Raise the proc chance limit from 90% to 100%. Reduce the level of most NPC's in zone's by about 5 to make them con grey, I expect this change wont make it through the less hardcore crowd but hey, we're the ones in recluses victory all day and as far pvp is concerned the arachnos and longbow are just there occasionally messing up our fights and not much else. They also fire PvE length mezzes at you as you jump overhead, which lasts far longer than anything a player can apply. No longer halve the values of the Core side of the Support Hybrid incarnate tree in pvp. Since other hybrids such as assault and melee are more competitive and the Radial version of support with its larger 80ft radius does not suffer this pvp penalty. Suppress offensive toggles, for a duration following the formula: B/(1+R) + A + M B = The Base Recharge of the offensive toggle. R = Recharge bonuses your character has. (eg 90% from enhancements, 80% from sets & 70% from hasten = 0.9+0.8+0.7 so 2.4) A = The Animation time of the offensive toggle. M = How long the mez that caused the suppression would last for. What this formula does is estimate the time it would have taken for a user to put the toggle back on manually, then suppress the toggle for that duration. So in the example linked the user is mezzed for 2 seconds, their Radiation Infection takes 2.35 seconds to recharge and has a 1.5 second animation time, so the total time that it would take for them to reapply Radiation Infection is 5.85 seconds, if they played perfectly. So that is the duration that they would be suppressed for under this formula. And that's my thoughts, im sorry for coming off as a bit pretentious telling you exactly down to the very numbers what I think should be done, but I did put a lot of work and fiddling about trying to get the best values for the curves and have revised my ideas several times in private, I hope you can find some use of them. Thanks, if you read this monster, for reading!

Thanks Crimson-Oriole, that was quite informative though there are still missing pieces in my understanding. From what you've laid out, my quick and dirty takeaways are: HP_Generic = 1070.90 BaseDMG_Generic = 107.09 LevelModifier = 1 UnspecializiedLevelEffectiveness = 51.93 Then BaseDMG_Class for an AT scalar of 1.00 can be gotten by simplifying your formula down to something like this. Which gets me back to my magic number that I pulled from the table before of 55.61*. Well im glad I have a bit more understanding of where this number comes from but it doesnt really change my use-case for it, I can still just think of it as an arbitrary number. *Which in my previous post I accidentally miswrote as 56.10, but you can see from my formulas I was using 55.61. So in my previous post, I was stuck between a situation in which using two numbers supplied would not produce the correct results, but I could by process of narrowing down on the missing variable approximate it and make it work. The missing variables were either a number which competes with 55.61, which I approximated to be 42.27, or a number which competes with leandro's supplied 1.82 ranged AT scalar, which I approximated to be 1.383. I did not know which of the two options was correct, but thanks to your AdjustedATDamageMod values, reaching the value of 1.383 (which is an approximated value for a suitable blaster ranged damage pvp AT scalar) for example is possible by multiplying the standard blaster ranged AT scalar of 1.125, and your AdjustedATDamageMod value of 1.229564258. So the conclusion I have to reach from this is that the first formula of the two options was the right one. However this just leads right into the question, what are leandro's pvp AT scalar numbers then? They don't produce correct results and arent needed at all in the formula which actually does, which uses the seemingly unrelated AdjustedATDamageMod values instead.

The way I see it, pets being able to keep up with you or not is a binary thing. Either they can follow your every move and thus provide you with BG mode constantly, or they fall behind for whatever reason be it derping out getting stuck on terrain or insufficient movement capability, and in that instant provide you with no BG mode whatsoever. Following on from that logic if pets were made able to keep up, the MM would be able to attack at will for as sustained a period as they desired, chasing as much as they wished whilst maintaining BG mode the whole time, at the same time the current dynamic they have where they must stay in their petball rather than flee would no longer be in effect, allowing them to run away whilst in BG mode. I think both aspects would be far too empowering as well as homogenizing the playstyle. For the solution I posted previously, both chasing and fleeing in BG mode is still off the table providing X is a small value say 3-5s. So a distinctive playstyle is still kept intact. However it would enable the MM to get in on spiking action.

Then what do you think of BG remaining in effect X seconds after leaving the radius, so the emergent strategy would be to leave your pets behind, dump your chain or debuffs then retreat back into radius, rinse and repeat. Without the fear of getting bopped.

Then my mind is changed. Perhaps changing this is just the buff we should be asking for then?

Going from DR'd 40% res to non DR'd 75% is a multiplier of ~2.4x to EHP, seems pretty important to me. 1/0.6=1.66, 1/0.25=4, 4/1.43=2.41 To show Macskull was in the right pointing out that being unaffected by DR is a big asset in terms of survivability. Though I don't agree MM doesn't need a buff, I do think that the quality of life buffs that increase the measure of control over pet behaviour that we are already set to receive will do a lot, and that in light of those we shouldn't be pushing for stat buffs on top right now. Assuming the damage share each takes is reduced accordingly by their own resistance, then that's not true. Are you claiming that if the MM is hit then the damage is reduced by his resistance and then shared as unresistable damage to the pets? If so that'll change my mind.

When pets do have resistances they seem to tend to have ~26%, (I am aware that they only have Res to certain types and also that there are pets without resistances at all), stack that with Sovereign Right (10%), Expedient Reinforcement (10%), and Mark of Supremacy (15%), and you've got them with 60%+ Res to the types they get natural Res to. Then if you happen to be something like Pain, Therm or Nature Affinity you can add another 17% minimum to all with significant or permanent uptime and that gets them to 75% If they were affected by DR they'd diminish to about 40%*, saying it doesnt have an effect is quite an understatement. *Assuming they got the Squishy curve, if they inherited the MM curve then 30%

Attack Name Old Toxins New Toxins Old Doublehit New Doublehit Bitter Freeze Ray 95.58 94.43 73.62 72.74 Bitter Ice Blast 78.95 55.93 60.81 43.08 Freeze Ray 67.87 51.50 52.28 39.67 Ice Blast 56.33 64.86 43.48 49.96 Ice Bolt 33.95 43.26 26.16 33.32 Strangler 99.14 85.47 76.37 65.83 The target had 37.7% res to all on live, vs 38.24% on test, I dont have the most precise methodolgy in the world, generally I just hope results drown out the margin of error. On live, I have also made a comparison between Toxins and Build Up using the Chain BFR > BIB > Freeze Ray > Strangler the results of which look like this: Toxins Damage Total: 1233.72 Build Up Damage Total: 1082.60 Toxins + Aim + Gaussians Proc, Damage Total: 1446.52 Build Up + Aim + Gaussians Proc, Damage Total: 1253.06 The damage totals only take into account the damage from the attacks and the bonus damage from toxins, so excludes things like damage procs. Looking at the toxins differences above and applying them to the results below, it would appear that the edge toxins had over BU has been cut by about 50 damage (for this chain at least). Not the biggest of deals although other sets were already looking enticing over it beforehand.

Hi, ive been working on a formula for pvp damages based on the AT modifiers listed above. Here are two links that both have the inputs set to look at Archery's Aimed Shot for a Blaster: One, Two. S is the Scalar C is the cast time of the power (so currently set to 1.67 for Aimed Shot), R is the recharge of the power (6s for Aimed Shot) A is the area divisor incase it ever proves useful. Now you may have noticed that in these two formulas that what I multiply S with is different, with one using 56.1 and another using 42.27. The way I set up the formula multiplies the AT Modifier above with these numbers to create the true scalar. Now what I expected is that since here blaster melee damage scalar is listed as 1.000, and in this table the corresponding value is 56.10 (at level 50), doesnt this mean that a scalar of 1.000 = 56.10? If that is true then the above listed AT modifiers must be wrong, since as you see in order to correctly predict Aimed Shot's pvp damage value I had to change the blaster ranged AT modifier from it's listed 1.82 to 1.383. Alternately if im wrong, can someone explain why when using the listed AT Modifier of 1.82, I needed to multiply this by 42.27 in order to generate accurate* results, and where this number could come from? *Multiple powers were tested using both formulas, not just Aimed shot. It does produce quite accurate values for the powers I tested that dont do extra funky effects like holds.

It was put in to counteract the effects of DR, the bonus recharge you receive lowers the more actual recharge you slot into the power. However testing has indicated it doesnt actually function at all, which for the sake of our PPM's I hope is never fixed.

When setting up a pair of binds like this: /bind X powexecname Power1 /bind Lshift+X powexecname Power2 On live you will activate Power1 when you press X and activate Power2 when you press Lshift and X at the same time. On test, when you press Lshift and X at the same time, you activate Power1, then if you press it again it will activate Power2. This bug doesnt apply to Control when used as a modifier key, as far as I know it only applies to Shift.

Something I've been working on. I may make a standalone post on it later. Covering how the solutions within solve some of the problems you have presented: Radiation Emission - The formula for offensive toggle suppression goes a small way to help this powerset. Thermal Radiation - The new values I give for resistance DR and Base Resists gives viabiltiy to Thermal +res shields. Sonic Resonance - The new values I give for resistance DR and Base Resists gives viabiltiy to Sonic +res shields. Force Field - The new values I give for defense DR gives viability to Forcefield +def shields, The new DR value for knockback enhancement strength I give reigns in Force Bolt. Controllers / Dominators - The protection based system with abuse proofing I describe increases the viability of these archetypes. Melee - The changes I give to melee ranges, melee run & jump speed DR values, and an "afterburner" effect after melee hits gives viability to melee. Although I understand you wanted more "ballpark ideas" than specific suggestions, I think there is only a very narrow range of DR curve parameters which result in both +Res shields being viable, and stacking +Res set bonuses all the way to high heaven (on a blaster for example) not being viable. For this reason I wanted to share the exact solutions I came up with through my process of discovery as to what those parameters might be. I believe that the change making +res shields functional alone would cause the pure spike meta to dissapate.

@Alouu - Ice/Plant Blaster @Whoogiewatsit - Empathy/Water Defender

Nah im not referring to that, here's what im talking about: https://web.archive.org/web/20120906120102/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4215484#post4215484 This is after much wrangling with the community over his initial proposals that he ended up at this implementation which uses enhanced recharge only rather than all recharge including global bonuses, but also has a lower boost to PPMs, 25%. Scrolling down in the same thread you can see he uses the +25% to ppm's for his other example calculations. That said I still dont know if they went ahead and slapped that +25% into the formula before shutdown or not.

Here is a Wolfram formula that I have been using. For this formula the editable values are: B: (B)ase Recharge of the power E: (E)nhancement to Recharge (As a percentage, this does not include global recharge like set bonuses & hasten.) A: (A)nimation time (Not arcana-times, the actual in game listed values) P: (P)roc Per Minute rating of the enhancement R: ®adius of the power if it is an AOE/Cone (If the power is a single target set this to 0.) C: Ar© of the cone. (360 if the power is an AOE) I put this formula together for my own purposes and after using it for a while I can say anecdotally that the numbers it spits out do seem to line up with the frequency at which things proc in game. However it is possible that the part of the formula that says (P * 1.25) should actually just be P, ie (P * 1). The reason for this is that although it was indicated by synapse that proc values would increase by 25% I cant find absolute evidence that this 25% increase was implemented into their i24 formula prior to shutdown. That said, again using anecdotal evidence only, it does appear to have been.