marcussmythe

And that does raise an interesting point, though one likely outside the scope of our discussion here - EFFECTIVE Damage vs Hypothetical. It may (may) be the case that at certain (likely quite high!) levels of difficulty, the Tanks greater HP, or ease of reaching defensive targets, MIGHT result in it having a higher EFFECTIVE output than the Brute, simply because the Tank has more design space to play with, or spends less time clicking to not die. I will note that my sentinel (yes, yes, laugh, sentinels) can handle some things that my scrappers cannot, simply because not being stuck in melee range with an Angry Kitty is a positive life choice. Similarly, at some situations, the Brute or Tank will have more effective damage out than the Blaster or Stalker - though I consider neither overbuffed in comparison - simply because the Stalker or Blaster is having to focus so much more time/energy/design room on not dying (or on buying mission teleporters and superspeed for quick returns to the action from the hospital). That said, 'burn the AV as hard as possible and run back before it regens' is a strategy...

Speaking to Elec - I could never love it on my Blasters, but Ive enjoyed my Elec/SR Sentinel so far. The combination of the T9 and Power Sink shuts down most incoming damage pretty handily. Power Sink could use a (much!) shorter animation. Overall damage has the usual sentinel damage issue, but that goes to Sentinel, not to Electric Blast

How many deaths for each?

On a cold corruptor? Yeah, your fine. Carry some purples and know to use them before the debuffs start coming in. Accolades and the DDR incarnate and an Agility you can swap in should round out everything else you might need.

Another consideration - I dont know what powerset or AT you are on, or what content you are interested in - but if your focused on DEF, I would consider going above 44.5/45 unless you are (1) Not pushing incarnate content (Incarnate opponents are more accurate), and (2) Have heavy defense debuff resistance (every mob in the game it seems debuffs DEF at the endgame). I like to have some breathing room to absorb incoming debuffs and retain my 'soft cap' - as this can delay or avoid a cascade collapse and the weird place where you go from 'Capped DEF Capped RES' to 'Negative DEF Negative RES' followed by a faceplant in a few seconds. Even with Tank Superreflexes nigh-immunity to DEF Debuffs, a few more points is a welcome security blanket. OTOH, on a Blaster, that 44.5/45% likely represents a huge investment of build resources, and much higher is either impossible, or at huge cost - you might be just perfect where you are on such a character.

It is probably good that we cannot completely suppress the SFX on Rad and Bio, or they would likely eat every other armor set in the game.

I find a lot depends on the AV. The real nightmare for me to DPS down was the Praetorian Manticore - I foolishly launched the mission at 54, forgetting he shifts up to +4 - making him 58 to my 53. That was horrible. Currently struggling with the right plan and inspiration mix for Tin Mage Bobcat. I can get her - Ive just got to separate her from the Walkers, wear her down, dagger her as much as possible during unstoppable, and hope it doesnt bug out - her unstoppable doesnt always crash her HP, and doesnt always stop giving her resists when it should crash. Giant Monsters, OTOH, are actually much easier for me - even with their higher HP totals, the fact that they arent level shifted to hell and back means that my Lore and Daggers can keep their regen under control much more easily.

While the ability of an AT to perform while the player is intoxicated -IS- an important consideration for some of us.. I think thats probably a separate day of testing. 🙂

Perhaps? But then what do we do about the part where different ATs have different resist caps, but the same def cap - as that impacts different resistance vs defense sets? Or the way certain sets get BUFFED when you move them to Stalker, and some get pretty badly hurt? Im not saying it wouldnt be worth doing - Im just suggesting it would be a huge amount of work out of a limited dev time budget.

Buzzard raises a good point. Claws is (relatively speaking) stronger on Tanks and Scrappers than on Brutes (as would be say, Dark Melee, or similar). I anticipate a set lacking such boni, or with smaller ones (Titan Weapons leaps to mind - as Momentum is a smaller buff than Buildup in terms of raw %) - would show relatively greater fury values. And I do apologize if I over-generalized your point, BZB - I was speaking more of the general case procmonster-vs-set-bonus, where 3-4 procs per attack is the target value. I do think in your specific case your results would be further apart on a set with less additional damage bonuses and more raw build-in damage, as the large fury buff tends to swamp the value of other buffs, and gives more return to higher base damage sets that rely less on in-set damage buffs to do their business.

OTOH, slotting for procs means you are NOT slotting for set bonuses, including regen, res, de. And procs are nice. Set bonuses are game-changing. And if I may reiterate - survival has a practical cap on its value (set at 'it cant kill me before I kill it') - and this level is really quite low, as there is little content that challenges the player by simply hitting very, very hard. (They did start adding debuff content that challenges, to a degree - but the nature of that challenge is slanted AGAINST survival sets, and in favor of 'CC it or blow it up before it can turn you off'). Damage always has additional value.

Id argue that, at least for resist sets, the scrapper plummets compared to the other two. My tanks and brutes think Smashing/Lethal Damage is something that happens to other people,and go get a sandwich. My Scrapper goes 'why god why' when Bobcat opens up on her.

Given that they have the same Resist Cap as Tankers, it seems at least theoretically possible that the Brute could match the tanks survival, very nearly - and icarnates, IOs, etc are WAY better at buffing defense than offense. And certainly, nothing in the game is so difficult that the difference between tanks and brutes is decisive for survival. Nothing will let a tank match the maximum damage output of the Brute. Higher DamBuff caps ensure this. Further - you managed to get your Tank to within 86% of your Brute's damage, while solo. In a team environment, the presence of buffs will cause the Brute's damage to start to pull away from the tanks (High Buff Cap) and those same buffs will likely remove any disadvantage the Brute might have in survival. Finally - Offense is worth more than defense. The more offense you have, the less defense you need. The reverse is not the case - and added survival has exactly ZERO value once you reach 'Cannot Kill Me'. Given that scrappers can solo TinPex, and that (I believe) an Empathy Defender has soloed 4/8 ITF, I would argue that the marginal value of increased survivability in the game, as it currently exists, is quite low. Conclusion: Tanks were not 'Overbuffed', save inasmuch as they were buffed to the point where the choice between Brute and Tank is now open to question, rather than being a given in favor of the Brute. The brute will still survive anything the tank will survive, assuming an investment in survival - but no investment in offense will cause the tanks damage to match the brutes. Postscript: Bopper raises a good point, but I understand BZB's concern about %s from survival sets. BZB - would you be okay with Brutes getting 100% of tank values (Resist, defense, etc), but with their HP base and cap set to 2/3's of a tanks - thus they have balanced offense and defense in the self-only situation. 🙂

I really hope your suspicion proves false. Incarnates, EPPs, IO set bonuses - the game excels at handing out survival tools. Buckets of them. Enough that from 40 to 50, it is trivial for ‘soft’ ATs to get, if not as hard as the ‘tough’ ATs, certainly tough enough for any content that matters. Nothing exists that drives the damage of the tough ATs at anything like the same rate. Procs help close some of that gap - but only some. If procs go away, but the other bonuses remain, then an imbalanced situation becomes moreso, and I will miss playing my tanks (etc) as I reroll into damage dealing ATs, preferably long range ones.

Without delving into the to-hut debuff vs defense interactions (about which I am not clear) - it wont be as good against AVs. AVs very strongly resist debuffs.

The first thing to do with your Cataphract is order it to stand still a safe distance away. I think the best answer for Diamagnetic would to be to make a sufficient percentage irresistible that it would -comfortably- outperform any other interface option, in the role of big game hunting - enough to justify a T4 Incarnate that really only matters in the smallest fraction of content. Some of this is driven by flavor and fluff concerns, inasmuch as this is a game about superheroes. The idea that Jael-El daughter of Cal-El can only defeat Gloomflank if she remembered to go buy magic daggers and whistle up a robot, lest the two flail ineffectually at each other until Jael-El gets bored and goes home, just never felt right to me.

Mostly we were missing on dark all these years because our opinions on it were largely informed by the early days, when even after the toggles were made stackable, noone could feed the thing stamina.

Man, I hate it when I go all ‘Modest Proposal’ and I get called out on it. I was trying nit to say ‘nerf rage’ out loud... I anticipate the reason it hasnt been ported to scrappers is because the PTB know that its already broken, and this would make it moreso. The reason that it remains broken on Tankers is because its such a popular set that fixing it would anger too many. Ill leave how to fix rage to the people that play SS. Once fixed, port. Or do a fixed scrapper version, and if fix is fun for all, back-port

Thus my suggestion that that interface is probably missing a '0' on its debuff value. Stacking 22.5% Regen Debuffs would give it a use case (GMs/AVs), but it would still live on a shelf otherwise.

I have not found the Regen Debuff to have meaningful value against any target, as compared to just more damage or the max HP Debuff.

Everlasting (and Reunion, being in a different location altogether) are on 'good' racks. Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Excelsior are on the currently 'bad' Rack, and are being moved.

Thank you for keeping us up to date and offering a very easy to understand explanation. Given how long I could not visit Paragon City, I will here merely note that I appreciate your efforts greatly, and I'm sure it will be up as soon as you can make it so. Thank you so much for your hard work.

Of all the survival sets, I find SR Tanks the most enjoyable to build. Not necessarily toughest/best/etc. - but having incarnate softcap just lying around, coupled with DDR that amounts to immunity - with knockon effects that make you functionally resistant to most other debuffs (cause they missed) - Ive just got so much headroom to chase resist or recharge or regen or HP or Damage - because unlike almost every other mitigation set in the game, it doesnt need much investment to do what it does perfectly well. I suppose Rad is the flip of this - its not as easy to cap as SR in its domain, but its pretty straightforward to cap Rad against all the damage youll see a lot of - and then where SR layers on res as HP drops, Rad gives you absorb and healing and all sorts of other goodies. I really should play more Rad.

Does it seem troublesome to anyone that the Regen Debuff Interface Proc basically doesnt? Not on anything you would care about using it on. They really should add a zero or two to that debuff amount

Been there. Done that. Have T-Shirt. What I tell myself is nothing will ever be perfect, and it certainly wont be perfect before it is played. So I like to spend a day or two fiddling in mids, shopping other peoples ideas, copying some of the better builds I see on the forums and taking the parts that work best for me, and then hammering out a V1 that gets slotted and played. Generally V1 will get respecced a couple of times, but after a month the build is usually settling down. Also, Im finding second and third builds very freeing. Build 1 doesnt have to do everything. Hell, it doesnt have to do anything. Build 1 should be FUN, full of powers that make me giggle and want to use them when I log in. Ill use builds 2 and 3 for performance focused tasks.