Maelwys

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...)

IIRC Procs that are in "autohit" powers require their own Tohit check; otherwise they just inherit the Hit Check of the parent power. Ground Zero still requires a hit check; and all my rolls were capped at 95% (and successfully hit!). I guess it's possible that a new internal power execution/redirect has been set up in such as way that the child power isn't set to inherit the parent power's accuracy or boosts properly... but it certainly appears to be inheriting the damage enhancement OK. Edit: Nope it doesn't appear to be accuracy related. Just retested quickly as a Level 50+1 /Rad Scrapper versus a pack of level 23 Sky Raiders + Freakshow in Terra Volta. The vast level difference should have made any accuracy discrepancies meaningless: That's 11 hits, so 33 possible Proc Activations... and only 12 kicked in (~36% activation rate) Second check versus another low-level group in the same zone (level 25 Freakshow + Lost): That's another 11 hits, so 33 possible Proc Activations... and only 11 kicked in (~33% activation rate) So the observed activation rate seems pretty consistent here and also in line with my earlier pylon testing. (e.g. my Scrapper's GZ proc likelihood is currently sitting at about 30-40%, whenever it should be capped at 90%!)

FWIW here's a combat log of twenty back-to-back Ground Zero activations, standing next to a RWZ Training Pylon with the above Scrapper (80.9% recharge, 3x 3ppm procs): CombatLog-GZTest.txt Breakdown: 0 procs = 5 occurrences 1 procs = 9 occurrences 2 procs = 6 occurrences 3 procs = 0 occurrences Total = 20 (Admittedly a lowish sample rate, but enough to highlight the problem. That distribution appears to be more in line with a 30%-40% chance of activation than a 90% one!)

Thanks for checking. Unfortunately I'm not sure then why the current observed activation rate in Ground Zero on Live is drastically lower than what is being predicted by the PPM formula. (The observed rate seems to be roughly ~30%; but it ought to be 90%. And until recently the observed proc activation rate in Ground Zero was in line with that 90% prediction!) Ground Zero has a 90s base recharge + 15ft radius + 360 degree arc + 3s cast time; so if it is slotted with 80.9% local recharge aspect (as in my Scrapper) then each 3.5PPM proc within it should be getting an activation rate that is capped at 90% (~114.5% before clamping). My Scrapper's Ground Zero currently has three such 3.5PPM procs in it; each of which should be getting a separate independent 90% chance of activation; meaning that the likelihood of me observing only one or fewer of these three procs firing should be 2.8%. However currently I'm consistently seeing that very situation (only one or no procs firing) happening over and over again in my testing; as shown in the above screenshots. (Also there should be a 72.9% likelihood of all three procs triggering simultaneously; yet I only observed that happening once across a series of over 25+ tests this afternoon!) So something still appears to be very wrong here... 😕

You used to be able to hit any ally with it, including pets and NPCs. And pets of your teammates (I dragged one along a few times as a follower on MM Farming runs!) Grant Cover has a "player teammate (alive)" target restriction but GZ definitely used to only be "ally (alive)". There was no reference to increasing the radius for allies or tightening up the target restrictions in the patch notes, but certainly could be something funky going on... I just checked on Live; in Peregrine Island standing near to a Mastermind with their 6 henchmen plus both their Lores and my own Lores out: (i) When unteamed; Ground Zero was only affecting my Lore pets. It didn't affect any nearby unaligned NPCs, the MM or their henchmen or pets. (ii) When teamed, Ground Zero was affecting my Lore pets plus the MM, their henchmen and their Lore pets. Then whenever i tested the radius by moving 16ft away from the MM themselves but still within 14ft of one of their Lore Pets, it wasn't affecting the MM any more but did affect that (closer) Lore Pet. Personally I think it's more likely that the devs have split the power into two effects - calling both as redirected power executions (like Fulcrum Shift) but the Recharge and/or Activate Period within those two redirects is currently set very low so any proc activations are having a much lower likelihood than they should. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to code a power that contains two completely separate effects so that both its effects get their proc rates properly reduced by the parent power's current local recharge slotting. However the damage component could be kept within the main parent ability (like Incendiary Swarm Missiles) which would allow that bit to benefit from procs properly... and then the healing component could be applied via a single redirected power execution or pseudopet which has a larger radius and a different target cap. As Ground Zero isn't flagged to accept Accurate Healing sets and it only affects allies; the only healing proc it could conceivably activate would be Panacea so IMO there'd be much less of an issue if it was only the "healing" component that was activating procs less than it should. AFAIK the alternative would be to set the Recharge and/or Activate Period of each of the redirected power executions very high so that procs work pretty well in it regardless. Like they did with Tanker Lightning Rod.

As noted here by ZemX. I've tested this on Live vs a Single Target (Pylon) with 3 damage procs in Ground Zero on my Scrapper. Whilst they ARE activating its very far short of the expected 90% rate. Something appears to have gone wrong with proc activation chance in whatever tweaks were done to get Ground Zero to have different target limits for friendly and unfriendly targets. As CoDv2 isn't updated yet I can't determine the exact cause but I strongly suspect it's now calling a child effect that has a lower base recharge time for the offensive properties (including these Procs)

I did a fair number of Mission Simulator runs with my EM/RA Scrapper during all the testing and didn't notice any issues with the damage output of GZ versus a lower number of targets... but I only had damage procs in it rather than KD procs and I was kinda focusing on the reduction to RT instead. I think GZ only takes 2.5ppm Knockdown procs rather than 3.5ppm ones? Even so it shouldn't be getting less than 90% activation rate until you've 65%+ local recharge aspect in it. EDIT: Just checked on RWZ. I've got 3 damage procs in Ground Zero on my Scrapper and they ARE activating but certainly not 90% of the time. So something appears to have gone wrong with proc activation chance in whatever tweaks were done to get it having different target counts for friendly and unfriendly targets. Paging @Captain Powerhouse... 😢