Coyote

🙄 If I cared enough to insult you, if I even were aware of you, be assured that I could manage it much more effectively than by arguing about game balance. But, by all means, if it amuses you to pretend that someone who never had a thought about you somehow decided to make it personal against you, amuse yourself. You have my personal permission 😄

All of these kinds of arguments are a cop-out. "I have enough evidence to convince myself and you should be convinced also. But if you want to persuade me, go and spend dozens of hours setting up a server, changing the code, balancing it, testing, and then report back. Then I'll be willing to listen." Basically, introducing an impossible bar in an argument under the guise of "but if you have evidence, I'll be most happy to take a look". The argument cuts both ways. Go ahead and create such a server, make the changes, spend all that time, and get back to me showing that the result would be a broken game, and then we can talk.

You're foolishly making this too personal. I prefer the Night Ward specifically for its difficulty, so my brave butt is out there soloing the two AVs at the end of the story arc 😛 I just happen to have been a game designer, and I see something that looks to be an error... or else some deliberate design choice that has never been explained. So I'm arguing that, in general, errors should be fixed. Even where the playerbase has gotten used to their broken Smoke Grenade and cries when it gets lowered. Or their toggle Instant Healing. It's not because I hate other players or have fun messing with them, it's because I see bad design as something to fix.

Wait, what? Changing one third of the variables in an equation DOES change the math. And, yes, the players can then add more Defense in other ways, but then that weakens other aspects of the build, making the capped-D builds significantly less effective in other ways. We already have that now, a bit, with Blasters generally having to pick a defense build or a proc build for more damage. If they get pushed to have to use sets with more Ranged D and less Recharge in order to cap... they can still cap, but at a higher cost. And, as I've been saying, that's fine. It's not soft-capping that is the problem. It''s not even that soft-capping can be done on ATs originally balanced around not having much in the way of defenses. The problem is the relatively low build cost to do it. The problem is that on a Blaster, we have: Maneuvers is 2.28%, and the highest Defense bonus is 5%. Tactics is 10%, and the highest Accuracy bonus is 15% (this is only included to be complete... I can't recall seeing too many builds caring about loading up on +Accuracy bonus from sets). Assault is 10.5%, and the higest Damage bonus is 4%. Clearly, the set bonuses for Defense were not balanced with the same balance in mind that were used for Defense powers. Even arguing that Defense set bonuses are limited and should be considered at only half their value still leaves them ahead of where they seem they should be if we look at Defense powers. BTW, the same argument could likely be made for Recharge bonuses, but that's a less relevant issue. So, then, why were set bonuses for Defense set so high? A mistake? A deliberate design choice? When I look at a game's design and I see something that's out of what looks like their normal balancing scheme, I generally expect to see a reason for it. If there isn't a reason, it's likely a mistake.

Electric is not high damage, and Rad is no damage and all debuffing. So your job is to drain the mobs, Immobilize them around the tank (AFTER the tank has pulled them in) if there is a tank, and debuff them. To give the tank a chance to group them, start off with the three Rad debuffs (EF,LR,RI) first.

I'm not sure if everyone is connecting the dots... YES, there ARE players who are 50 and have problems at +2. These characters ARE NOT A PROBLEM. These characters generally do not have soft-capped builds. These characters do not need nerfing. There are ways to address soft-cap issues. Limit set bonuses to 3 or maybe 4 or a kind. Or maybe Defense only (if that's possible). Lower Defense set bonuses. These players are not going to be hurt because almost without fail, they don't have builds that are going to be affected. It is POSSIBLE to target nerfs at min-maxed builds. It is also NECESSARY to target nerfs at min-maxed builds, because as we see from these anecdotes, there are casual players without top builds who could get hurt if a global defense nerf on all powers were to be implemented in order to try to do something about min-maxed capped Ranged (or S/L) Defense builds.

Are you using Sandolphan's numpad binds? In it, his commands are generally something like: numpad4 petcom_pow dire wolf aggressive However, you can group henchmen as follows. In my example, "Corruption" is the name of my Hellfire Gargoyle: numpad4 "petcom_pow Prince aggressive$$petcom_name Corruption aggressive" What this does is that when I am commanding my Demon Prince, he is receiving commands because he is summoned by the pet summons "Prince". However, Corruption also gets the same commands because I'm giving them to him at the same time, using his name specifically. This allows me to treat the Prince and the Hellfire Gargoyle (who does -Res) offensively and send them at priority targets, while keeping the Fire Demon with me in Bodyguard mode for protection and healing the Demonlings. You can do the same by setting up the binds to use multiple commands given to individual names, rather than a single command given to all members of a particular tier.

It is for soloing AVs where I care about capping defenses. Otherwise, there are two things: 1) "killing AVs faster" isn't a real tactic to survive AVs. You need to survive for minutes in any case. Neither are "mez them" or "debuff them" (at least not for Blasters). However, these tactics DO work on other mobs. You CAN kill mobs fast enough in a spawn that even though they're damaging you, with the Sustain power up it's not a major thread. And you can mez (or knockdown) or debuff them as defenses. 2) In general, a lot of AV soloers who depend on soft-capped defenses without debuff resistance... will skip AVs who have major -Defense debuffs like Positron or Silver Mantis. But it's very limiting to try to skip all the mobs who either have +ToHit buffs or -Defense debuffs. I mean, there are so many of them... that you pretty much need a plan anyway for the situations when you're NOT going to be softcapped. So, given that you can't depend on being soft-capped even if you start out that way, and that you can use damage/debuff/mez as actually effective tools in quickly shutting down incoming damage, it follows that defense for a Blaster is a good defensive option, but not necessarily the only effective one.

My fastest leveler solo, and most fun to level, was a Plant/Savage. Plant is also a great set. Dark Control is IMO clearly better than Earth, and Electric is comparable to it. Earth Assault is probably the best secondary, though Energy, Savage, and Martial all have a reasonable argument about why they're good. Fire also, with some strong and ranged primaries. Earth/Earth is a good combination of two good sets, but other than the fun smashyness of Earth and Earth, I don't see it as being on a pinnacle looking down at the others. Try Plant/Nrg or Plant/Savage, Electric/Earth or Martial, Dark/any of the above, and they will also do very well and should be a lot of fun to play. Electric and Dark, especially, do quite well prior to Incarnate levels. Oh, and as a note... the Plant/Savage Dom, who is amazing at ripping through missions (and was through the leveling process) has soloed most of the AVs I met and the Kronos Titan, which are clearly its weakest point. Some of them before perma-Dom. So I can't see Dominators as being sucky before Incarnate levels... going to perma-Dom was a much bigger effect than getting Incarnate slots, but even then, before perma-Dom all of my Doms have felt as one of the stronger ATs.

Putting the Cloud Senses proc in it is always a good idea, because it has a lot of powers that can activate that proc. The other procs each trigger on a single power, so you'll be getting their base damage out of them... 90% * 3.5 * 71 damage, per minute... or about 3.7 DPS from a single proc (more for the purple, but I would put that in Abyssal Gaze). 3.7 DPS from one slot isn't bad, but neither is it really good.

You don't lose too much by lowering set bonuses for the first 30 levels or so... it's hard to achieve significant Defense values from set bonuses by then, due to having fewer slots and most bonuses coming in the 5 and 6 slots. So it's not really 49 levels that are affected. I don't know that non-set sources of Defense need to be nuked. As I said, sets that can reach good Defense values usually do so because that's their trick. The problem is when Bio Armor which isn't a great +Defense set, caps Defenses. Or a Dominator or Blaster, who don't have any Defense powers from their primary/secondary... can also cap. And these aren't happening without the large set bonuses. You might be able to squeeze out a capped Defense build if set and IO defense values were halved, but it would be a really tight build, and sacrifice a lot for it. And I'd probably say that's fine. I don't think that Defense in general needs to be crippled, or that Defense powers from Primary or Secondary sets are overpowered. The pool powers are already very weak... usually under 3%, whereas you can get 3.75% Ranged Defense from several sources, and 5% from some sets. I don't really think that pool powers are the problem when they're weaker than set bonuses (granted, they affect more attack types)... nerf the set bonuses to about half, and it's possible that the problem is solved enough. You'll still have builds with capped defenses, but they'll really have to sacrifice in other ways.

The Demons have the best MM attacks, and I take and slot all 3. The AoE lash is the most important since it's AoE... and takes Force Feedback IO with an excellent chance to proc. Then comes the melee lash, for the same reason: good damage if you use procs, and the Force Feedback proc. Corruption is nice, but can be skipped if the build is tight. It's damage is okay but it won't get better than okay, but it does help stack -Resist on a target (you can double-stack Corruption and single-stack the whip for about 27% -Resist). Endurance will be a problem, as with all MMs who are attacking heavily, but Cold is not an active defensive set so it can support it pretty well, and when you get Heat Loss the endurance issues disappear. It's one of the best secondaries to support a Demons MM who wants to use personal attacks a lot.

You cannot balance a game with only buffs. Well, theoretically, you COULD, but it requires far more work since then you'd have to buff all of the opposition, in effect "nerfing everything first" and then buffing the weak sets.

Exactly. I said that Defense IS too high... but I only mean at high level and with IO builds. Powersets that are meant to have defenses are fine... it's the IO sets that push them over the edge. Builds that aren't meant to have defenses are only too strong with a high-IO-set build... without that, they're fine. In the end, lowering the +Defense set bonuses would pretty much solve the issue, IMO... so some sets can cap Defenses on SOs? That's fine, they're balanced that way. Consider: the highest +Damage bonus in IO sets that I can recall is 4%. The highest +Defense is 5%. So IO sets give Defense bonuses at a higher rate than Damage bonuses. But in the game, a +20% Damage buff isn't considered much, and a +40% Damage buff is good but not gamebreaking. But a 20% Defense buff is awesome, and a 40% puts most characters well over the soft-cap. So, in the game, Defense buffs are (properly) balanced around being much lower than Damage buffs. And base enhancement of Defense powers is also at a lower rate than base enhancement of Damage powers. Do you see ANY builds around that are considered very strong... because someone built up +Damage bonuses from IO sets? Absolutely not, because the IO set bonuses for Damage, compared to powers that give +Damage, are quite low. But when you look at IO set bonuses for +Defense, many of them are higher (albeit usually not to all attack types) than many actual Defense powers. If Defense (and Resist, but not as much) set bonuses were balanced around being comparatively as strong versus Acc,Dam, and Recharge set bonuses as Defense powers are, we wouldn't be seeing most of the problems.

Channelers for the Awakened also give a large buff to all in the spawn. Lieutenans for Nemesis give Vengeance when they die, start stacking that and the hits pour in. The Resistance faction at high levels (which you very rarely fight) has Targeting Drones. Some (or maybe all) kinds of Vanguard Bosses have like 30% bonus and hit like (accurate) Mack Trucks landing on you from orbit.

Eh, roll a Ele/Shield Stalker, and BE the nuke 😉

I'm doing NinKin. Hopefully my plan to keep them alive by running into melee and melee heal-bodyguard-tanking for them will work 😄

Well, again, why not? A set that buffs ally Defense, Damage, and To Hit... will get more from a Lore pet since it can increase its accuracy, damage, and defense. The lore pet will survive longer against an AV and do more damage with that set, than with another set that doesn't do that. So, then, doesn't one set get more benefit from a lore pet than another? Sure, your base concept that Lore pets make a great difference is true, but it's also true that the same Lore pet won't add the same amount to all sets. So, if the same Lore pet benefits some sets more than other sets, isn't that relevant? Now, if it were actually true that Lore pets make all content trivial, and kill things so fast that the damage done by the primary/secodnary sets didn't matter, and didn't have to be defended to survive +4/x8, then it would be true that considering them would be irrelevant. But I've had AVs squish my pets, and I've had Lore pets do way more damage on a /Storm with a lot more -Res than on a Dominator with almost no -Res, and for those reasons I actually do consider which Lore may benefit a particular primary/secondary more than others. So, it does seem that different characters may benefit more from Lore pets in general, or from some specific Lore pets, and I think that it's worth mentioning. You keep arguing about what I would consider the "general case"... a mix of AoE and single target, some AVs but mostly not fighting AVs all the time, etc. In those situation, Lore pets work about equally well for all characters, and shouldn't be considered. But some of those in the thread are discussing specific situation like an AV fight with a full tray of inspirations, Lore power recharged, etc, and which combination would do more damage there, versus a "general play" situation. It's not that either argument is more relevant, but what is relevant is realizing the difference in the situations that are being considered.

I can see some merit for this argument, but I can also see a counter argument. When you have a buff/debuff set that does -Res, then pairing it with an attack set that does more damage than another set, the -Res is going to be of more benefit to the higher-damage attack set. Conversely, pairing a buff/debuff set that does damage directly, with an attack set that does -Res, results in more damage from that buff/debuff set. So, it is reasonable to consider the effects of -Res powers from one set, and damage powers from another set. I'm not sure how reasonable this is to extend to Lore pets. It's a relatively rare situation, but on the other hand we're often considering edge cases when we're looking at maximums anyhow, so it does seem like a warranted factor to consider.

I agree with this. But I also agree with Dr Causality that statistically, a Demon/Storm will pull out more damage on paper vs a single target. And if someone makes the argument that it's harder to reach theoretical maximums with Demons than with Thugs in normal play, that's true also... but both points should be mentioned and explained so that someone reading the thread gets a good understanding of which sets do highest damage and under what conditions, rather than a blanket statement that one is better than the other, no contest. Not that I'm suggesting that you ever did anything like that, actually. For my contribution: with personal attacks, Demons push out about 60% -Res, which multiplies both their own damage and Storms (in theory). So assuming that they started with the same base damage (which is not true), they would do about 1.6x Thugs damage. And with a slight bonus of using Lash in an attack rotation which brings up Storm powers faster, and a major bonus of "where did my Endurance go?!?". However, players should remember that going up in levels hurts sets that depend on -Res more than sets depending on pure damage. Going to +3 pulls the damage down to about 70%, which has the same effects on all sets. But it also pull the debuffs to 70%, so while both sets drop in base damage, the Demons now are at about a 1.42 multiplier instead of 1.6. So they get affected more by level differences than Thugs, who depend more on base damage than on -Res.

Should I give him another target? Thugs/Storm is highest over multiple scenarios including AoE. Demons/Storm is highest on a single hard target like an AV, because multiplying Storm damage by about 60% -Resist is a huge improvement over proc opportunities. Although that debuff goes down to about 40% against +3s so as the level goes up, the damage advantage goes down.

You can also add Achilles Heel to it and add -Res. +HP, +End, -Def to mobs, -Res, and it also does damage. Yeah, it's great 😄

Did it get Lethal Resistance added? I haven't looked at it on Homecoming directly, but it used to be Smash/Energy only.

I think I'd go with Necro/Kin. Because speed boosted, Fulcrum Shifted, Inertially Reduced Zombies ballet-jumping around the dance floor while the Lich sings an aria is a sight you'll never forget. No matter how hard you try.

No, nor other dead-teammate powers like Vengeance.