macskull

Hey, a nerf is a nerf.

I think reducing the end cost of Disruption, lowering the recharge of Liquefy, and speeding up the animation of Sonic Siphon would go a long way to helping that set out.

I'm pretty sure the tech is already in place to do both these things (you can set targets as waypoints to get distance and you can use the Combat Analyzer to see enemy stats) and I think it'd be awesome, it's just a matter of how it'd be implemented. Buff/debuff bars would probably get pretty cluttered for some encounters.

That's... not how math works. Adjusting the -res component from 30% to 22.5% is a 25% reduction in effectiveness, not 7.5%. This means that all the targets in Tar Patch will take 25% less damage - not just from you, but from everyone else as well.

That was how I had it set up originally and will probably go back to tomorrow. I’ll add that info to the spreadsheet. Just wish it were possible to allow anyone to edit only a few cells while leaving the rest of the sheet protected.

Updated the link to do just that but you now (obviously) need to be logged in to a Google account to view your local copy.

With Electrical Affinity on the test server and actual chain powers getting implemented, I went ahead and updated my PPM list (also linked in the OP) to include a PPM calculator in a new tab. The updated spreadsheet includes calculations for single-target, PBAoE, TAoE, cone, chain, and auto/toggle/pseudopet powers. Of note: just like @Bopper said in the OP, the current area modifier for chain powers pretty heavily penalizes procs as max targets goes up, but it looks like the biggest single drop in proc effectiveness (at least for the Electrical Affinity powers) is after the first stack of static where max targets goes from 4 to 7. EDIT: Removed the "make a copy" portion of the link so you can view the calculator without logging in, but you'll need to make a copy to make any changes to it.

So why not take a look at the sleep mechanic, and leave the proc alone until there's meaningful reason to take a sleep power other than this interaction? What's going to end up happening here is AoE sleep powers will once again become relatively useless until at some point in the future they're looked at, if that ever happens, because I'd bet it wasn't even something being considered. Changes to the Call of the Sandman proc right now just mean some powers become pretty much useless again where at least now they have some utility. Honestly, I'm all for going back to the pre-PPM system if only because PPM is leading to several weird interactions which end up causing nerfs simply because of an interaction with a specific type of power. I'm still not entirely sure what problem PPM was supposed to fix but it seems like it's caused more problems than it solved (assuming you see proc interactions as an imbalance, and I don't). That being said... if we are really going to neuter the Call of the Sandman proc like this, it should honestly be a higher % heal and be unique. Make it, say 20% heal unaffected by enhancements and buffs, make the proc a unique IO, and possibly adjust the 6th slot set bonus to account for it. This makes the proc actually useful in single-target sleeps while not completely neutering its performance in AoE sleeps, and since it's unique you don't have to worry about people multi-slotting it to chain heal themselves. Just to be clear, I'm not against this change because it affects me personally (I generally skip sleep powers and don't think I've ever slotted the CotS proc) but because nerfing a proc because of a specific interaction between that proc and some powers seems like bad design.

Tar Patch was already worthless in PvP so this nerf won't change anything.

I for one would be completely okay with this, it makes the proc system easy to understand again and eliminates further balancing of individual procs or powers based on their interactions with each other. It's worth pointing out though that per the post above mine it's pretty clear the current way PPM works is the way Synapse "intended" it. EDIT: Re: Call of the Sandman in an AoE - there are a few problems here. It seems like players' chief complaint is that if you nerf this proc it once again makes AoE sleep powers useless in most use cases and the proc is the only thing making those powers worth taking. Instead of changing how the proc has worked for the last 7 years maybe it's time to reevaluate AoE sleep powers (and sleep in general) first and look at procs later.

Sometime around I11 (either when it was in beta or shortly after it went live) Castle said the power proc'ing on the player was working as intended. Of course you can't really search the old forums and I haven't been able to find the post in question, but the point is there.

BA and WM were pretty bad sets until WM got buffed. BA is still sitting back there, relatively unchanged since Issue 0 while the game has evolved around it. AR being rebalanced around Ignite should tell you everything you need to know about the set being bad - on paper it's got the best AoE output of any Blaster primary but most of that AoE is tied up in awful, long-animating powers like Flamethrower, Ignite, and Full Auto. Ignite is good damage only if you can keep a target in it for its duration but its radius is so small that it's next to impossible. Pretty much the ability to go intangible whenever you wanted to, as often as you wanted to, didn't make a whole lot of sense from a gameplay/balance perspective.

Nope! PvE reasons there as well (but I think the nophase period needs to go away, there's not really a point to that when phase powers detoggle after 30s).

Correlation != causation Or, to provide more detail: the Energy Melee changes didn't happen until three years after CoV's release, and if the concern was really Stalkers, they would've left the power alone on the other ATs that got it.

Even if this were true it would still be the case now (at least for Energy Transfer) because animation time is one of the power attributes that can't be changed between PvE and PvP. EM was nerfed because it significantly outperformed every other melee set in single-target damage. Basically it was the single-target Titan Weapons of its time. If you stick around for the rest of this post, I'll explain more below. While ET itself was only a 1-second animation, AS was 3.67s with a concurrent 2s interrupt time. The only people that were dying to the AS/ET combination (4.67s at a minimum) against Stalkers were players who were deliberately standing still long enough to be hit by both powers (aka bad players). AS didn't stun you, and ET only had a 50% chance, and if you got hit by both the stun didn't really matter anyways since you'd be dead. The EM nerf was two separate parts: stun mag on Total Focus went from mag 4 to mag 3 - an entirely PvE-based change since there was zero functional difference between mag 3 and mag 4 mez in PvP but that extra mag allowed you to stun a boss with one power - and an increase in the animation time of Energy Transfer from 1.0s to 2.67s. The goal of the changes was to rein in EM's single-target damage, specifically in regards to Energy Transfer, which had a DPA roughly three times higher than any other melee attack. To be fair, the EM nerfs were heavy-handed and largely unnecessary because they took a set that was good at one relatively unimportant thing and made it good at nothing, and back when the changes first went to test I remember advocating for simply swapping the ET and Stun animations and calling it good because while it would've been a nerf it wouldn't have been nearly as bad as it ended up. TL;DR: Yes, the EM nerfs sucked (and still suck) and went too far, but saying they happened because of PvP is disingenuous at best. And with that, back to the topic at hand!

This is categorically false. In the entire history of this game there has only been one power which received a PvE nerf for solely PvP reasons and I'm betting almost no one here knows what that power is.

Needed to condense two bugs into one title so here goes: Melee Hybrid toggle is still giving mez protection and not resistance in PvP Phase Shift suppresses while mezzed in PvP Thank you for attending my TED Talk.

To be fair, the only thing that has a 5% minimum chance to hit is an even-con minion or lower enemy since all enemies get accuracy bonuses from their rank or relative level, to the point where, for example, a +4 AV actually has more than double that 5% chance to hit and there is nothing you can do to lower it. An interesting thought exercise would be to implement elusivity (currently a PvP-only mechanic which is basically "anti-accuracy") for PvE. This would mean for the most part defense remains entirely unchanged but if you run powers that give elusivity (almost every armor set toggle and the APP/PPP shields that give defense) you'd be able to actually reduce enemy chance to hit. That being said, I feel like this is a solution to a nonexistent problem since players are very rarely fighting against enemies that actually have a 5% chance to hit and it isn't possible to lower that minimum hit chance anyways.

Set bonuses got a pretty significant overhaul in Issue 24 - resistance bonuses were increased across the board and coupled with mez resistance, defense bonuses were tweaked to provide both typed and positional defense, and debt protection was replaced with endurance discount. Prior to I24, sure, defense and recharge were probably the most important things to build for simply because of how those interact with the game as a whole and you'd have to significantly alter the game mechanics to make that not the case. These days, yes, I think recharge is more important than it used to be but it comes at a tradeoff - you build in lots of procs and build for global recharge to help your proc rates but then you're missing out on other bonuses because you're slotting procs or hunting for slots to fit more recharge in. The changes to resistance bonuses mean it's easy to help shore up weak areas in builds (especially S/L/F/C) with IOs, and you've always been able to focus builds around damage, regen, and HP if you choose to do so. For example, most PvP-oriented builds already focus on building for max HP and range instead of recharge and defense.

Really? The additional damage proc is one of the reasons I'd roll a Corruptor over a Defender in many cases. There's only one non-unique ranged damage proc so every bit you can get helps and this is one of my chief complaints with the Defender and Sentinel ATO sets.

I think at that point it becomes a delicate balancing act and there's no guarantee there'd be any rhyme or reason. I guess if damage procs were flat-rate and non-damage procs used PPM, it might be okay, if the concern is how much extra damage things do now? Full disclosure: I don't actually think there's anything wrong with PPM in its current form and quite frankly it should just be left alone because whatever changes end up getting made are going to be immensely unpopular. The only scenario I think PPM is questionable in is PvP and even that could be solved by tweaking diminishing returns curves for damage resistance instead of messing with PPM.

I'm of the opinion that the current PPM system is more fundamentally flawed than the old flat-rate system if you're looking at it from a damage standpoint (and I think that's what most of the discussion revolves around). Sure, the old system favored fast-recharging powers and AoEs but the as-implemented PPM system doesn't actually result in that much of a damage loss in those same powers now while also providing a disproportionate boost everywhere else. The PPM system also has some pretty bonkers implications in PvP builds, to the point where damage procs are now resisted in PvP (they generally weren't back on live). Honestly the simplest thing to do from a balance standpoint is just to go back to the flat-rate system.

Enabling PvP in an SG base would be a potential nightmare with the current base editor. Back on live (before I13 when base raids were disabled) bases had to meet strict layout requirements to be able to be used for base raids to ensure base designers couldn't do things like have enemy players spawn into a room full of defensive items with no exits, for example. If any further development time is going to be spent on PvP I think the PvP community would like to see bugfixes and balancing passes first. EDIT: Obligatory plug for Phase Shift still being broken in PvP

VEAT leadership toggles have used the new cast times since VEATs were introduced in Issue 12. Every power that buffs or debuffs you has the same VFX you're talking about here. By default non-arena temp powers are disabled in the arena. The powers on this list are non-arena temp powers that have been bugged since time immemorial and have been available for use in the arena.

The lack of damage procs in the Sentinel and Defender ATO sets kinda sucks since the higher-damage ranged ATs get them (though that's really more an issue with the fact that there's only one non-unique ranged damage proc).