Maelwys

To be fair, they did that already. This appears to just be vocalising it to a wider audience. So at worst here IMO it's valid complaint; but questionable location for the soapbox. Thanks Arachne. As @Troo said in the OP; this was a biiiiiiiiiig patch and it's not surprising things were missed out. So less pointing of fingers + chanting SHAME! SHAME! etc; and more slight venting of frustrations in not getting the full picture of exactly what's changed + wondering if there's anything that could be done to address it without completely destroying the dev's motivation to sign into Git. ((And I 100% appreciate that "documentation" is the main downfall of many multinational professional software outfits...)) 🙄

Procs DO fire after the game determines targets hit; otherwise multiple targets wouldn't take damage from any procs slotted into an AoE. What's happening in the "variable recharge" powers is that they have a static base recharge time (typically the shortest possible) that the power always uses whenever it first activates... then the game checks what the power's valid targets are and triggers its effects on them. These effects all kick in more or less simultaneously, doing things like inflicting damage/debuffs/CC/etc, triggering the activation of any procs etc (based on the power's current recharge), and also triggering the variable recharge mechanic which waits for a second or two before manually adding an extra X seconds per target affected onto the parent power's current recharge time. The power always activates using its shortest possible (base) recharge time - the lengthening of that recharge time happens AFTER you trigger the power... whenever that power's other effects (including procs) have already been triggered. You can see this happening in the CoDv2 entry for stuff like Cinders.

STAHP beating on @Troo, dammit. They're making a good point. Not about the magnitude of MoG's protection reductions. But because those reductions weren't listed in the patch notes. I find it annoying whenever changes, even extremely minor changes, get left out of a change log. Because those minor changes can very often have side effects that aren't readily apparent. It's a very basic troubleshooting step: "I'm having an issue with XYZ" --> "OK. Has anything changed?" If the answer is "Well, we don't really know for sure because the list of changes doesn't include everything, only the changes that were deemed sufficiently important or far-reaching" then that's a failing. I realise that condensing down a bunch of GIT-commits to a list of human-readable bullet points can be very difficult (especially for a bunch of volunteers!) and so it's very likely that there's no easy fix to this one. But the complaint itself is a valid one IMHO.

The recharge time on Water Jet and the Epic Blast are the limiting factor. That's why I mentioned potentially swapping out Dehydrate if you have enough global recharge or if you're taking a ranged Epic attack that has a longer cast time... but Dehydrate actually makes a reasonably decent DPA attack whenever it's procced out. If you're sticking local recharge enhancement aspect into Water Jet and the Epic Blast rather than procbombing them then you'll end up with considerably more wiggle room with the timings, but by not procbombing WJ you lose out on a LOT of potential damage since you're using it twice per rotation.

FWIW I ended up with this: Scrapper - Kat_Regen IOed v2.mbd Above numbers are with one stack of Divine Avalanche and Reactive Regeneration set to 0. Doesn't need as much global recharge as before due to Instant Healing uptime not being a thing now; but it has just enough for a seamless Single Target attack chain GD > GC > SD > GC. At-will Melee Softcap (and that's without double stacking DA!) plus all that regeneration and MoG to fall back on keeps it ticking nicely. Debuff Resistance numbers with Ageless running aren't half bad either - I've definitely noticed the extra DDR from Ailment Resistance!

IIRC prior to the introduction of ATOs, Brutes were the top tier Melee AT. They were able to deal more damage than a Scrapper (or at least very similar damage to them - there were a few edge cases depending on your powerset and whether you were fulcrum shifted or not) but with better mitigation and inherent taunt. ATOs and the Stalker Crit mechanic revamp rocketed Scrappers and Stalkers ahead in terms of damage output. Tanks were never really on the board at all for damage output until the revamp on HC. They were simply low damage aggro magnets and a Brute could almost equal them in terms of mitigation with sufficient investment and/or buffs. Then i26p4 hit. Tankers got their base damage buffed and their damage limit increased and their target caps increased and their cone arc size increased and their AoE radius increased and their buff modifiers increased and their power ordering tweaked to provide better AoE capability. Brutes got a slight reduction in their damage limit (nerf) and their ranged damage modifiers were increased (buff) and Fury generation was tweaked so it built up faster and didn't decay as quickly (buff). Brute performance remained roughly the same (if Fulcrum Shifted they went from being slightly better than to slightly worse than a Scrapper, before ATOs) Tanker performance went through the roof. Overnight Tankers almost closed the gap on the other melee ATs in terms of Single Target damage; and began dominating in terms of AoE damage. At least when you discount ATOs. In practice, the Scrapper and Stalker ATOs are sufficiently powerful that those ATs were capable of remaining well ahead of Tankers (and Brutes!) for Single target damage... but for AoE damage things are very different. Because whilst a lot of ATO'ed-up Scrappers (and possibly an Elec/Shield Stalker) are capable of putting out very high big red numbers in their AoEs; without any inherent Taunt they find it more difficult to herd mobs up and cope with "runners". And whilst Brutes possess an inherent Taunt, they don't get anywhere the same level of damage boost from ATOs to ramp up their damage output. Tankers though now have inherent Taunt, decent base damage, larger AoE ranges and higher target caps. Mechanically-speaking there was no contest at all. Whilst it's possible to build an AoE-focused Brute, it generally relies on leaning into things other than the offensive powerset. Epic Pool attacks (which have a 15ft radius and 16 target cap by default) and/or edge cases where Fury affects a specific Secondary Powerset ability (like Brimstone Procs and Burn ticks) but Crits and Gauntlet do not. IMO Tankers needed their AoE damage output reduced because it was outright mechanically unbalanced (bigger target caps + larger coverage range + high base damage) I believe that currently Brutes are only really let down by their utterly rubbish ATOs; which are especially pants compared to the Scrapper and Stalker high-performing ones. If you took everyone's ATOs away then the four Melee ATs would actually be pretty well balanced now (barring a few extra minor tweaks to Tanker "overcap" values etc.)

Depends on the cone, but yeah it's comparatively minor unless you're using *lots* of procs. Crowd Control's the biggest (180 degrees) and from what I can tell a +50% arc increase would bring it from 54.30% to 47.98% base activation chance for 3.5PPM procs. That's about 4.535 average damage per activation, per proc... so realistically worst-case with 4x 3.5PPM Procs it'd be a loss of about -18 damage per activation. The likes of Innocuous Strikes (90 degrees) would go from 54.36% to 50.53%. That's about 2.748 average damage per activation, per proc... so realistically worst-case with 4x 3.5PPM Procs it'd be a loss of about -11 damage per activation. That's barely double figures; and obviously anytime you're not just fighting a single big sack of HP the wider arc itself would more than make up for it; but you just know certain pockets of the playerbase would start getting extremely irate about a few seconds difference on their pylon times... 🙊

1) I don't enjoy trying to catch multiple melee foes within narrow cones; and I think that increasing the Arcs again probably makes sense given that the Devs increased AOE radiuses again. However one thing to keep in mind is that if they increase the Arcs on a power-by-power basis rather than as a global buff then it'd negatively impact proc activation rates in those Cone attacks. So anyone who uses Procbombed Cones in their Single Target attack chain (and there are a fair number of sets that have at least one decent melee Cone) might notice a bit of a loss in Damage. 2) Agreed. I'm still of the opinion that a -50% flat "overcap" reduction would be more balanced than a -67% one. That said, whilst I think they overcorrected Tanker performance slightly; IMO it's not off balance by a huge amount now. Frankly if they just make the Overcap reduction 50% and then reworked the Brute ATOs I'd actually be pretty content now with the overall melee AT balance. [EDIT: Except for the Tanker Inherent. It's a bit lacking as it stands currently with just "Small AoE Punchvoke". Let it increase their aggro cap slightly too, please!] 😉

In short; "Magnitude". You can see it in any power in CoDv2 as long as you set the "Show for AT" box to "None". (it's visible in the Mids database as well but the raw stats there are a bit trickier to get at) (i) See the terms like Melee_Damage and Melee_Debuff_Def and Melee_Ones? Those are modifiers. The first two vary across different ATs and the last one stays constant. There are dozens upon dozens of these and you can see them all on the far right here. (ii) See the actual numbers like "1.0" and "0.67"? That's the magnitude or scale of each effect. It's an indicator of how strong the effect is (and it doesn't care what the effect actually is/does!) That's a good example. Here's the relevant bit for Seeds of Confusion. See? It's applying a "scale" 8.0 effect which gets multiplied by the AT's Ranged_Stun modifier. The upshot is that it inflicts a stun with a base duration of 8*1.863=14.904 seconds on a Controller; and 8*1.49=11.92 seconds on a Dominator [EDIT: ZemX and Uun beat me to it! You wait ages for a math-head then three come along at once... ]

Because the most you'll get out of putting Health IOs into Health is a few HP/Second extra Regeneration (it's the region of ~2.5 HP/Sec before procs and set bonuses) But by putting Health IOs into Frigid Protection you almost double the +Absorb that it grants you every two seconds (from ~18.1 to ~35.5) which stacks up to 6 times. The upshot is you gain about 4 times as much in terms of "sustained damage mitigation"; in addition to an additional ~108 Absorb which sits on top of your regular health pool (for ~212 Total) and acts as a "spike damage buffer".

Assuming that you're referring to the build linked in the OP (AA's original 2023 "AA_AFK_SL_Page5.mxd" build here ) Very rough comparative ballpark numbers WITHOUT Lore/Destiny/Hybrid or -Resistance debuffs factored in: >>> RadM/Stone Brute <<< Assuming 90 Fury (typical value when steamrolling) (Note: @90 Fury Brimstone adds roughly 24*3 damage to Atom Smasher; with a flat 80% activation rate) Atom Smasher (including average Brimstone Proc Dmg): 486.9/11.418 = 42.643 Mud Pots: 42.405 Irradiated Ground: 43.62 Total Average DPS = 128.668 Best case DPS (with all of the above being constantly applied to 10 mobs) = 1286.682 -------------------- >>> Elec/RadM Tanker <<< Atom Smasher: 311.6/13.038 = 23.899 Lightning Field: 28.45 Irradiated Ground: 34.35 Total Average DPS = 86.699 Best case DPS "pre i28p2 patch" (LF+IR applied to 10 mobs. AS applied to 16 mobs, with all taking full damage) = 1010.390 Best case DPS "on Live right now" (LF+IR applied to 10 mobs. AS applied to 16 mobs, with the last 6 taking 33% damage) = 914.792 However it's important to note that this Tanker build really isn't min-maxed for passive damage output. Whilst it has two damage auras and a PBAoE... it's not running Assault or stacking Damage Set Bonuses. It doesn't have a Gaussian Proc in Tactics or Focused Accuracy. It's procbombing Lightning Field and Irradiated Ground and Atom Smasher rather than slotting them up for Damage and Recharge Aspect; etc, etc. However it's still a perfectly effective AFK Farming build because it hits the required passive survivability thresholds. AFK farmers don't really need to do high DPS, even if specific defensive sets have a lot more wiggle room than others and let you push the envelope a bit more.

Nope. Procbomb Frozen Aura instead. It's also worth noting that any Healing Procs in Frigid protection only get the opportunity to trigger whenever there is a foe within range (due to the way its Absorb is coded). Globals like Preventive Maintenance are fine though; and Guaranteed 120s duration procs like Numina's Convalescence or Miracle can generally be kept up OK. A Power Transfer Proc is sorta bearable in it if you have no other active sources of Healing and you're constantly surrounded by foes. I'd always aim to ED-cap the Healing Aspect and slot at least one EndMod IO, Sticking some slow in it can be a good idea too (or taking an Intuition Radial Alpha slot). Personally I settled on this slotting for my own Fire/Ice Blaster; plus an Intuition Radial Alpha. [Heal, Proc; Heal, Proc; EndMod, Proc]

Yup.

No. If you have enemies around you then up to 16 of them will get damaged. AND If you have teammates (including your pets and/or your teammates' pets) around you then up to 30 of them will get healed. There is no effect on friendly NPCs, league mates, or any other friendly-but-unteamed players. However according to the patch notes for Issue 28 Page 2 this behaviour is not correct, as it should be affecting up to 255 allies, not up to 30 teammates. There is already a fix in the works for proc activation rate in Ground Zero. This targeting issue was mentioned in the same bug report but I don't see it being expressly acknowledged by the Devs. So it might be worth waiting until after that fix hits Live and then if GZ's target selection is still not correct filing a separate bug report.

I was just making a clarification to the target behaviour of Ground Zero; which you and Warboss were both discussing; and the reason I quoted you was due to your mention that non-teammate allies (like league mates) should be getting affected by GZ; which is older behaviour that isn't currently the case on Live. "Did you have all 30 targets (league mates, teammates, enemies) within a 15ft radius counted" "It can hit a max of 16 enemies within that radius, with the rest being allies" etc. (i) At the moment Ground Zero's 'heal' is only targeting teammates and their pets, not other allies like league mates. It's up in the air whether this is intended behaviour. (ii) Due to the way the Devs have recoded Ground Zero; it's now calling two separate power executions - one for the 'heal' and one for the 'damage'. The target lists for these are treated separately. So it's targeting "30 (alive) Teammates and Teammate pets" and "16 (alive) Enemies" rather than "30 (alive) entities, 16 of which can be enemies".

Prior to i28p2 Ground Zero affected "Ally (Alive)". However currently its buff component is only affecting "Player Teammate (Alive)" https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=redirects.rad_armor.ground_zero_ally&at=scrapper Testing has shown that it's currently healing your teammates as well as any pets (including Lores) belonging to those teammates. But it is not affecting nearby NPCs or unteamed friendlies any longer. The proc activation rate in Ground Zero's offensive component is also bugged currently (about 1/3rd of what it should be!) but a fix for that is on the way.

FWIW - CP has now confirmed the underlying cause of this has been found and fixed, so expect Ground Zero to start proccing properly again SOONTM.

Fantastic, thankyou!! 👍

It certainly looks weird. I know that Fulcrum Shift (Kinetics) has two power execution effects too; as that's the one I immediately thought of whenever I heard "two power executions" mentioned. Looking at the raw JSON code; both Fault and Fulcrum Shift each have their respective two power executions coded as two separate Execute_Power calls within "effects": However Ground Zero (Radiation Armor) has its two power executions coded as just one Execute_Power call within "activation_effects" (not "effects") Whilst I wouldn't expect the format differences to be causing grief to the PPM rate calculations... this is CoX we're talking about. Or maybe Fault and/or Fulcrum Shift are similarly affected and are also experiencing a reduced proc activation rate but nobody has noticed? 🖥️ 🧙‍♂️ 💥🧯

Shame; the proposed revision that it being reverted here had looked quite a bit better than what we ended up with on Live after i28p2. Proc activation rate in RT is currently extremely poor (28.77% base for 3.5PPM procs) so hopefully the future balance pass will smooth it out a bit. That said; RT is still miles better now than it's ever been in terms of damage mitigation against a nasty single target like a AV/GM; and personally I'm more worried about Ground Zero's proc rate (which from what we can tell has been reduced by roughly 2/3rds due to a weird bug and we've yet to pin down the cause!) than RT's. Hurrah! 🥳

Agreed! Also FWIW, Uberguy has just updated CoDv2. Looks like the new redirect that handles the healing component is indeed set to "Player Teammate (Alive)" rather than the original "Ally (Alive)", which explains why it's no longer healing any nearby friendly targets that you aren't teamed with. Unfortunately I still can't see anything obvious in either the main power or the offensive redirect to explain the observed proc activation rate reduction.

My expectations are going off a 15ft radius. The damage procs I've been using are each 3.5PPM and (as shown by your table!) in theory each of them should be getting their activation rate capped at 90%. FWIW I normally use a copy of MacSkull's Google Sheet for any quick PPM calculations (mainly because it lets me see at a glance exactly how far over the 90% cap I'm going + therefore exactly how much leeway I have to increase my local recharge aspect enhancement!) plus CoDv2 to find the base values to plug into it. Currently CoDv2 is still using the pre i28p2 patch figures for Ground Zero; of 15ft radius; 360 degrees, 3s activation, 90s base recharge. These values predict that for 3.5PPM Procs like Touch of Lady Grey, my Scrapper's Ground Zero with 80.90% recharge should be sitting comfortably over the 90% cap (~114.5.% before getting clamped to 90%!) If I increase the "Recharge slotting" value it shows that GZ ought to be able to take up to ~134% recharge before 3.5PPM procs will dip under the 90% activation rate cap. These expectations do certainly all appear to tie in with your table. The values in this table look right. However unfortunately they're not reflective of my current combat log results on either Live or Brainstorm. My Scrapper typically runs with 80.9% recharge in their Ground Zero; but I'm currently only seeing each 3.5PPM damage proc trigger roughly 30-40% of the time (rather than the predicted 90%!) regardless of whether I'm activating it on a single target (like the pylon) or multiple targets (like the large spawns in Terra Volta and Cimerora). I'll try to test proc rate in some similar high-recharge, high-radius AoE powers (a Blaster Nuke ought to do...) later this evening just in case this oddness isn't just limited to Ground Zero - I know at one point during i28p2 Open Beta damage procs were dealing lower damage than they should across multiple powers so it's probably worth ruling that out. You've got me wondering now whether 3.5PPM procs are being mistakenly treated as 1PPM or 1.5PPM procs somewhere; since the predicted rates for that are just about matching my currently observed numbers... 🤔 🔍 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Edit: So I did a quick check of a different PBAoE with a similar predicted proc activation rate (my Fire Blaster's Inferno) and it appears to be functioning just fine. Therefore whatever is happening here to skew proc activation rate; thankfully it appears to be limited to Ground Zero rather than a global thing. Predicted 3.5PPM proc activation rate is ~121.5 (where Ground Zero's was ~114.5) before clamping; so it's being capped at 90%. With 2x 3.5PPM Procs slotted: + First BOOM - 9 Foes hit. 18 proc opportunities, 15 proc activations (~83.3%) + Second BOOM - 9 Foes hit. 18 proc opportunities, 18 proc activations (100%) So that's a predicted proc activation rate in Inferno of 90%, and an observed proc activation rate of ~83.3% and 100% - well within the margin for error. If Ground Zero's proc rate was working properly then I'd be expecting to see a very similar number of activations to the above. But instead, it's currently acting like the below (despite having the same predicted proc activation rate and the same number of slotted 3.5PPM damage procs!) Predicted 3.5PPM proc activation rate is ~114.5 before clamping; so it's being capped at 90%. With 2x 3.5PPM Procs slotted: + First FOOM - 10 Foes hit. 20 proc opportunities, 7 proc activations (35%) + Second FOOM - 9 Foes hit. 18 proc opportunities, 6 proc activations (~33.3%) So that's a predicted proc activation rate in Ground Zero of 90%, but an observed proc activation rate of 35% and 33.3% - much lower than it ought to be. I could understand if this was just me being "unlucky" a few times; but other tests vs multiple targets and prolonged testing vs a Single Target (see my pylon log above!) is all showing roughly the same observed 30-40% proc activation rate instead of the predicted 90% proc activation rate. And it's not just me either - @ZemX noted here that the activation rate of their Knockdown Proc (which I think is 2.5PPM?) has plummeted from ~90% to ~25%...

Thanks - I picked up some unslotters and retested this morning with a single Touch of Lady Grey and different combinations of local recharge aspect slotted in Ground Zero: This was seeing proc activations roughly ~90% of the time on both Live and Brainstorm. This was seeing activations roughly ~70% of the time on both Live and Brainstorm. This was seeing activations roughly ~40% of the time on both Live and Brainstorm. This was seeing activations roughly ~30% of the time on both Live and Brainstorm. In theory Ground Zero ought to be able to take up to 134% local recharge aspect slotting in it before seeing any difference, yet versus a pack of 10-11 foes I'm very consistently seeing 7+ procs firing whenever it has 0% recharge slotted in it and 3 or fewer procs firing whenever it has 99% recharge slotted in it. If you're unable to see the same behaviour happening internally and there've been no related changes then something very weird is going on! 🤯 (I guess worst case whatever is causing activation rate to work properly on that newer internal branch will get pushed to Live at some point...) 🤞

Yeah; I did a fair bit of testing this afternoon and I'm observing about a 30-40% proc activation rate on my Scrapper's Ground Zero whenever it should be capped at 90%. I've submitted a Bug Report. Captain Powerhouse has already responded to confirm that the internal redirect power's recharge and cast time look OK; and I think I've managed to rule out anything funny happening with Accuracy not being inherited properly... but something has to be causing the proc rate to plummet. (At the moment my money's on some overlooked default setting in one of the new redirects that's making the PPM calculation think its base recharge is ~25s...)