Maelwys

I'm 132% confident that my builds are properly slotted... 🙃 More seriously, I'm a OCD powergamer across all games, tabletop or computerised... ...which basically means that I'm a complete spreadsheet junky and numbershead but not a "spoiler or shamer". I enjoy completely grokking the underlying mechanics of a game and learning abilities/powersets in exhaustive detail. And min/maxing. However I don't particularly like being the star of the show and I certainly don't like causing my teammates to have less fun. So I'll often roll up a "sub par" (powerset combinations that are considered underperforming/conflicting/bad) and/or "support" (team buffing) character and then push its mechanical performance as far as I possibly can. And whenever I'm on a team I'll typically hang back unless I'm being called upon to tank (in which case you can bet that I'll be leading the way, virtually unkillable and keeping everything tightly bunched up for AoEs; and playing merry havoc with the concept of the aggro cap via pseudopets and mez effects). For City of Heroes, that has translated to things like a creating a viable Spines/DA scrapper that simply could not run out of endurance back in i9 (unheard of at the time), Blasters that got around the T9 Nuke recovery crash by using *Rise of the Pheonix* or *Drain Psyche* as part of their regular attack chain, one of the first melee-defence-softcapped Electric "Blappers", a Katana/Regen scrapper that outdamaged Claws/ (due to -res and damage procs), a INV/SS Tanker who could go toe-to-toe with Ghost Widow and the Clockwork King, a Peacebringer without Nova form who still put most Fire blasters to shame, and a Sonic/Elec Defender that was instrumental to scoring quite a number of team "firsts" (e.g. MoSTF) on the server in question and almost clocked up more playtime than all my other toons put together... And much more recently; taking *Repel* on a toon that has no native Resistance/Defences or Mez Protection (a Bot/Kin MM which can keep its henchies alive unaided whilst ploughing through groups of +4/8 faster than a Brute, even *without* abusing Bonfire). Oh, and a /RA Scrapper that has Softcapped positional defences, Hardcapped S/L resistances, and more effective Maximum HP than a Tanker with Dull Pain up and greater self-healing over time than a /Regen. I'm a firm beleiver in "frankenslotting" - not using full 6-piece IO sets everywhere; but instead 3 or 5-slotting to get more useful procs, set bonuses or raw enhancement % numbers. And also in taking "Confront" on Scrappers... 🥴 Now, if you ask me if I'm confident in my costumes, that's another question entirely... one of my coalition Supergroups back in the day was called "the Iconites" for a very good reason, and I rather suspect more inf has been spent on tailor fees over the years than on respecs!

The latest revision of the patch that went live a few hours ago has altered Bonfire yet again. I've been tracking and testing the changes on my Bot/Kin/Heat MM. A longer comment is in the main thread , but the main points are below: ------ + On Live, a player always flopped five times over Bonfire's 45 second duration. A critter was likely to flop ten times. + On Brainstorm yesterday, a player always flopped five times over Bonfire's 45 second duration. A critter was likely to flop four times. + On Brainstorm today, a player always flopped three times over Bonfire's 30 second duration. A critter was likely to flop six times. Yesterday I noticed many large spawns that didn't have a single flop before they all made it out of the bonfire. Today was better. Not quite as good as on live, but better. The smaller radius means that critters are rather more likely to make it out of the patch than they are on live; but providing you can keep them within the area of effect then the flop rate is good enough to make bonfire "viable" once again as a CC tool. The shorter duration is annoying however - 120s base recharge, 30s duration, and 3.07s cast time makes it practically impossible to run permanently any longer; even for a /kin with Perma-Hasten, triple-stacked Siphon Speed and a +33% recharge rate T4 Alpha Slot. I don't see anything in the patch notes about a reduced duration, so I'm hoping that's a bug...? Notably the ToHit check does indeed appear to only be kicking in for damage. The knockback/knockdown didn't appear to be missing; even vs players. My "hostile" target player in warburg noticed a lot of misses from the damage ticks; but they still got flopped on their rear the same number of times regardless of +defense toggles or insps. I also tested both Sudden Acceleration KB->KD and Overwhelming Force KB->KD individually and combined; as well as adding Ragnarok: Chance for KD. There did not appear to be any noticable difference in flop rate from the additional IOs (e.g. pick any one single KB->KD and don't bother adding a Ragnarok proc) However combining Bonfire with another ability like Whirlwind or Repel (with KB->KD procs in them) made the critter flop rate skyrocket. [EDIT: @TheDevs: I know part of the balance pass involves a penalty for "Hard Mez" (like Holds) of 3.0x cooldown and for "Soft Mez" (like Immobilises) of 2.0x cooldown. And Bonfire as a KD patch could nearly count as "Hard Mez". However 30s duration/120s recharge combined with the reduced 15ft radius feels a bit too drastic to me. Any chance of 30s duration/90s recharge or 40s duration/120s recharge instead; or bumping the radius back up to 25ft please? Personally I'd actually lean towards the latter - Bonfire's damage is honestly an afterthought for me; but there are people who have been leveraging it as a AoE damage patch... and at least if it keeps the original radius they could choose to slot it for +Accuracy and Damage Procs, at the expense of Recharge Rate and CC effectiveness. Alternatively, perhaps apply yesterday's lessened KD rate but allow multiple slotted KD IOs (Sudden Acceleration KB->KD, Overwhelming Force KD Proc, Ragnarok KD Proc) to combine and raise the rate so that 2-3 IOs = equal to Live?]

The line in blue is new. Earlier versions of the proposed beta patch had reduced the KB/KD rate substantially whenever Knockback-to-Knockdown IOs were slotted in bonfire. Apparently they've reverted part of that (increasing the rate again) in this revision of the patch; but added an accuracy check instead for the damage component (presumably the power is too good if it deals autohit damage *AND* autohit knockdown...) As it happens, I actually tested Bonfire's KD/KB rate on my Bot/Kin/Heat MM (has bonfire via his epic pool) only yesterday. Just before this revision of the patch became available. On LIVE, my MM's Bonfire with either a Sudden Acceleration or Overwhelming Force KB-to-KD IO in it will keep a group of foes in its radius flopping almost constantly. They often don't have time to fully stand up before they're bounced on their rear again, with the result that hardly any of them get attacks off. On Brainstorm yesterday, the same group of foes can stand up and run out of the radius and/or get at least two attacks off before they're bounced again. The change was so drastic that I immobilised a group and checked how often they flopped over the course of a Bonfire patch; then did the same against another player character in Warburg... I've just done another test on Brainstorm today. + On Live, a player always flopped five times over Bonfire's 45 second duration. A critter was likely to flop ten times. + On Brainstorm yesterday, a player always flopped five times over Bonfire's 45 second duration. A critter was likely to flop four times. + On Brainstorm today, a player always flopped three times over Bonfire's 30 second duration. A critter was likely to flop six times. Yesterday I noticed many large spawns that didn't have a single flop before they all made it out of the bonfire. Today was better. Not quite as good as on live, but better. The smaller radius means that critters are rather more likely to make it out of the patch than they are on live; but providing you can keep them within the area of effect then the flop rate is good enough to make bonfire "viable" once again as a CC tool. The shorter duration is annoying however - 120s base recharge, 30s duration, and 3.07s cast time makes it practically impossible to run permanently any longer; even for a /kin with Perma-Hasten, triple-stacked Siphon Speed and a +33% recharge rate T4 Alpha Slot. I don't see anything in the patch notes about a reduced duration, so I'm hoping that's a bug... Notably the ToHit check does indeed appear to only be kicking in for damage. The knockback/knockdown didn't appear to be missing; even vs players. My "hostile" target player in warburg noticed a lot of misses from the damage ticks; but they still got flopped on their rear the same number of times regardless of +defense toggles or insps. Oh, and I should point out that I tested both Sudden Acceleration KB->KD and Overwhelming Force KB->KD individually and combined; as well as adding Ragnarok: Chance for KD. There did not appear to be any noticable difference in flop rate from the additional IOs (e.g. pick any one single KB->KD and don't bother adding a Ragnarok proc) However combining Bonfire with another ability like Whirlwind or Repel (with KB->KD procs in them) made the critter flop rate skyrocket. Bonfire on LIVE Bonfire on BRAINSTORM YESTERDAY Bonfire on BRAINSTORM TODAY

The benefit of NOT baking the level 6 upgrade power into the henchmen is that you can opt to not use it on your AssBot. That ridiculously bad 'Flamethrower' attack is still a big drain on damage output. Agree Bots can be a bit tricky to fit all the uniques in, unless you're level 50 with bags of inf to spare and have got your Frankenslotting down 100%. They could have doubled the Protector Bot defence and made it unenhanceable; just as they could have fixed it to work with two components like Ember Shield. The current proposal on Beta still feels like a bit of a cludge fix to me.

This has gotten firmly into Granny Smith vs Tangerine territory. To recap; briefly: Earlier on in this thread, there was a conversation between FUBARczar and Erractic1 about the Sonic Blast primary. Erratic1 pointed out that Sonic has some decent attacks prior to the T9 Nuke; and was not in as "horrible a position" as FUBARczar claimed. FUBARczar then posted a screenshot of the chart produced by Galaxy Brain (as pointed out by Kachooman). Oedipus_Tex asked if that chart represented solo clear times, and I pointed out that it did... but "with SO enhancements only (no IOs, no procs, no incarnates, etc)." In that exercise by Galaxy Brain, the purpose of the chart (as-stated at the very top of the thread) is: "the premise of these tests are to isolate Ranged Primaries as much as possible to gauge their "realistic" base performance in a given mission environment." Note the specific goal there - it is not ranking a Sonic Blaster versus a Fire Blaster versus an Ice Blaster, it is ranking the Sonic Blast Primary versus the Fire Blast Primary versus the Ice Blast Primary. Secondary and Epic powers are purposely not used. I am 100% not contesting that a few of of the powers contained within the Fire Blast powerset are particularly brilliant in terms of DPA, and that therefore whenever you include the Secondary and Epic pools, those particular powers can contribute to an excellent attack chain and a better character. The chart used a particular mission; but things such as player ability and playstyle and enemy type and mob positioning are all going to factor in there. We could look at Fire Blast's attacks versus other sets's attacks (both fully procced) to show the difference in raw additional damage from IOs that each can theoretically gain (e.g. the below for Ice Blast; only looking at primary attacks in isolation and assumes recharge % slotting in the actual attacks = 0. It doesn't factor in "attack chains", but the recharge times at various global recharge rates give some indication of uptime/availability). Or we could model the likes of Water, Rad, Dark, etc. since all have multiple AoE attacks which can take multiple useful procs (Rad can even become a better -res debuffer than Sonic: Irradiate by itself can take both Achilles' Heel and Fury of the Gladiator)... but endless screenshots of spreadsheets don't actually answer the question of "Is my blaster going to deal more damage if I take the Fire Blast Primary?" The answer to that question is obviously going to be "yes" the vast majority of the time. But attempting to model the difference in actual total performance between SmokeyMcFirePants and SuperScreechySonic-san is a whole other ball game. I have indeed played Blasters and Defenders rather extensively over the years on live (and a few on HC too, although my playtime is extremely restricted these days compared to a decade ago; so I usually prefer to roll any new builds up on my private i24 box). My two favourite Blasters on live were a Sonic/Elec/Ice Blapper and a Fire/Ice/Fire engine of destruction; and I played a Sonic Defender a lot as well. All of which were IO'ed up the wazoo. I'm aware of the differences in performances and playstyles between actual characters. And that that is a much different conversation than "Primary A is x% better than Primary B with SOs and y% better with IOs". It's considerably trickier to objectively rank two completely different builds let alone opinions about which feels more powerful or which you enjoy more. We could spend umpteen more pages trying to pin down acceptable baseline character builds and then work out the best slotting possible for several different attack chains per character; but a Fire Blaster is always going to be top tier at damage output - I'm not debating that in the slightest. So with all that in mind, I'm not sure it's going to be all that helpful to continue this particular tangent any further. --------- However... the conversation about DPA might be worth continuing? There are a few powers within the Fire Blast set which are total outliers: Fireball, Blaze, Blazing Bolt, possibly Inferno (its base damage is excellent, but its a bit of a playstyle question whether PBAoE > TAoE). Individually each of those have a few "peers" across the other powersets... Fireball: Other sets have things like Ball Lightning and Irradiate; and some ranged hoverblaster setups might find cones nearly as easy to position... but by and large this deserves its reputation. Long Range, Low Arcanatime, Wide Radius, Easy to position. Blazing Bolt: a top-tier snipe; although other powerset snipes can trump it one-on-one due to additional damage proc opportunities (Moonbeam, for example). Blaze: Base DPA is ridiculously high. A few other powers can contend with it (Freeze Ray and Bitter Ice Blast spring to mind) but those exist in a set that doesn't have Fireball. ...but much of the ranking of the Fire Blast powerset comes from the fact that it contains all of them simultaneously. Since DarknessEternal brought up the notion of "nerfing" Fire Blast earlier... would it be more acceptable to rebalance such powers by increasing their animation time (like they did on Energy Transfer back in the day) or to lower their damage output? [My preferred solution would still be to establish some kind of balanced relationship between Animation Time and Damage across all powersets; but that would obviously be a major undertaking!]

I'm very tempted to respond here with several pages worth of PPM math and a link to a spreadsheet. Instead, I'll merely point out that +recharge is NOT the be-all-and-end-all of IO slotting; and that my argument earlier was not that other Blaster powersets > Fire; but that their performance isn't as far ahead of the rest of the pack in the actual game as they are in FUBARczar's chart screenshot. My reasoning for this is: (i) Compared to some other powersets, Fire Blast gains a lower damage multiplication effect from heavy investment into IOs (e.g. its attacks cannot take the same sheer amount of multiple damage procs compared to Ice or Dark) and to a lesser extent from Incarnates (For example: their optimal attack chain Blaze->BlazingBolt->Fireball wants +400% recharge. Taking Spiritual or Agility Alpha rather than Musculature Alpha will go a large way to getting there; at the cost of raw +damage). (ii) Fire's DoTs are difficult to leverage on teams because often things end up dying before the DoT ends. (This is a similar effect to "overkilling" or "corpse blasting", but it's much more difficult to compensate for/work around). Only in a vacuum. For example: @oedipus_tex pointed out earlier that Sonics -res debuff is substantially higher on the Defender AT than on Blasters. If we're talking solo raw damage over time against a target that you can't kill in less than a few seconds, then naturally Fire Blast will have an advantage. It's the no-nonsense DPS powerset. But it's not the most team friendly powerset; and its ST attacks take only one damage proc outside of uniques: Gladiator's Javelin. Assuming this post isn't lacking its [sarcasm] tags, I'm not railing against Fire Blasters - I played one on Live for years. Their damage output and power selection is actually pretty well balanced compared to the others. What isn't well balanced (and has NEVER been) is animation time. If the HC team did a balance pass over the various ranged powersets to address animation time...? (Even if it was not to actually adjust the lengths, but to make them interruptable by a subsequent power activation after a certain duration; like what happens with redraw!) Well, I could definitely get behind that.

Yep. As far as I know it applies to everything except for +recharge%. So... if you have a Musculature Alpha, then that should buff the damage of your Lore and Judgement powers, etc. I'll admit I've not tested all of them, but it's rather easy to see the effect in the combat stats window for things like "Barrier". Edit: Yep, quick check shows the Judgement Ability is showing a very sizable difference in damage numbers with/without Musculature Alpha slotted.

As far as I'm aware Alpha Slot buffs have always buffed the other Incarnate Abilities (except for +recharge, which if I rmeember correctly was specifically disallowed by the devs since it'd make things like Lore and Judgement and Destiny too powerful to be up more regularly)

Depends on the Barrier tier. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Destiny_Slot_Abilities#Barrier The Core Epiphany is the one that can be "perma" as recharges in 120s and has a (small) component of its buff that lasts for all 120s. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=incarnate.destiny.barrier_core_epiphany + Grants 5% Defence for 120s + Grants 2.5% Defence for 60s (so 7.5% total) + Grants 25% Defence for 30s (so 32.5% total) + Grants 57.5% Defence for 10s (so 90% total) It also gets affected by any Alpha Slot buffs, so you can multiply those +defence values by 1.2 if you're running an Agility or Nerve Alpha. (It has identical values for +resistance% as well; but the +defence% is obviously the one we're talking about for softcapping!)

That used to be the case, but thankfully not anymore. I'm regularly seeing 2-3 green numbers over my head every 10 seconds now.

No worries, I'm exactly the same myself pre-caffeine! 😁

They're currently perma-softcapped whenever i'm running Barrier. +4.42% from Maneuvers +5.00% from the Edict of the Master +Def Unique +12.80% from the first Protector Bot Bubble +12.80% from the second Protector Bot Bubble +6.00% from Barrier Core Epiphany (+5% regular with an extra 20% added to it from the Agility Alpha Slot is +6% total) +5.00% from the Call to Arms Unique Subtotal = 46.02% Defence (as per the second screenshot) But (unfortunately) they will stop being softcapped if the proposed changes go live. +4.42% from Maneuvers +5.00% from the Edict of the Master +Def Unique +22.19% from a single Protector Bot Bubble (12.8/7.5*13) +6.00% from Barrier Core Epiphany +5.00% from the Call to Arms Unique Subtotal = 42.61% Defence. The totals in each of the positional defence categories in my screenshots are correct. The defence from the Call To Arms unique is already getting added at the very bottom of each of the positional defence categories. It's just that it is being lumped within a subheading named "Base Defence" instead of being listed individually. It's only a few percent, but the difference between softcap vs nearly-softcap is pretty major. Hence my suggestion that if this is intended as a quality of life change... then surely it would be better to just change the defensive numbers for the Protector Bots; rather than the MM or the other henchmen. And as far as I'm aware (from my own experience tweak my i24 test server) the most straightforward change would just require duplicating the Force Shield power and flagging one of the copies as [AoE/only affects robotic henchmen/stacks from different sources]; and the other as [ST/only affects owner/never stacks from any source]. That'd mean the Protector Bots would just need to throw up a single bubble each once every four minutes as an AoE (2x 7.5% base, affects all henchmen) plus one of them throwing another on their owner (1x 7.5% base, affects the player). The stat magnitudes would't need touched, so it'd solve the start-of-mission-setup delay and Protector Bot +Defence issues without affecting anything else.

The best (worst?) I've personally experienced was a Laserjet Printer. One of the old indestructible cube-shaped HP Monstrosities (I want to say "4200n"?) Technically it wasn't directly aimed at me, but I still had to dodge it. And so did the temp agency guy who was just arriving to the IT office on their 1st day of work as it hurtled past the doorway just a few inches from their face (not exaggerating/joking even a little bit!) That wasn't the first time our IT Manager had a bad phonecall with a particular Board Member and it wouldn't be the last; but we did make a point afterwards of keeping the pile of old decommisioned equipment further away from his side of the room... (These days I'm CyberSecurity... so I regularly get to scare/annoy the bejeepers out of board members. Turnabout is fair play indeed!)

Any forum means lots of people, lots of preconceived notions, lots of different ways of thinking; and lots of different automatic responses to things. But CoH also has a MASSIVE gulf in "experience" and "conventional wisdom" between the folks that have been around since beta and those that've just turned up post-shutdown... even leaving aside how active you were on the old message boards. If I see someone with questions or the wrong idea about things then I'll usually try to type up something if I have a few minutes to spare. Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes another person even adds something else that's worth me paying heed to. Often it's not even about having the discussion with the OP as much as leaving a bit of helpful advice for the next person who has a similar query and comes across the thread in a forum search. I've been accused of many things on various forums over the years, occasionally including patience/helpfulness. But I currently have a 12 month old and honestly I've noticed that there are a lot of "transferable skills" involved. There exists another human being who doesn't think the same way you do, who desperately wants something, and who is having trouble communicating clearly. Your end goal is obviously learning and enlightenment and happy coexistence... but first you'd better be prepared to deal with incoherent arguments, unintelligible screaming, tantrums, being totally ignored and/or getting half-eaten chunks of banana thrown at you. Although I used to work in tech support, so I've had much worse things thrown at me over the years. (Unfortunately I was born in the very early '80s so I can't claim either millennialship or boomerdom. My memories of the year 2000 are also rather hazy. I vaguely remember there being rather a lot of fireworks and alcohol, but not quite as many computers exploding as people had expected...)

That's not a bad power selection, but the slotting has considerable room for improvement. As-is it's missing ED-capped damage in Storm Kick (I suspect that whoever built it made the mistake of leaving Assault Core Embodiment toggled on in Mids - it incorrectly adds +DamageEnhancement rather than +DamageBuff) and using -resistance procs in Crippling Axe Kick and Dragon's Tail (rather than the FF, which only has a 33% chance of activation and only shaves 1.27s off when it procs; so probably isn't adding much to your attack chain). Focus Chi is also technically underslotted - it can take 70.84% recharge enhancement without the Build Up Proc's activation chance being negatively impacted. The sets in the various +Defensive Powers and Tough are a bit all over the place - the 5-piece LOTGs should be altered to leave out Defence/Recharge instead of Endurance/Recharge, and the IO slotting configuration with the most Endurance Reduction in it should go in Maneuvers. Accuracy is way overcapped - all the attacks are well over the 95% Hit Rate cap versus +4s (let alone the regular +3s you see at endgame) even without Tactics or the Kismet. A 6-piece Numina set in Health is also a bit ridiculous considering the state of +regen in the current game and the shortcomings of the rest of the build; it'd be much better served splitting that up and using more procs in Physical Perfection and Stamina and adding a 6th Mako's Bite in Storm Kick to keep Ranged Defence the same. Without swapping out any powers or moving too much around, it could look something like this (same Defences/Resistances if not a smidge higher; same global recharge rate. Lower +Regen but more +Healing Procs so overall health return works out higher. Bucketloads more Endurance Recovery and significantly higher damage output!) All that said; I still prefer the first build - this one won't be able to softcap its defences on Incarnate content (needs 58.75% defence to Softcap) even with Barrier running; and even regular taskforces on the new difficulty settings will require some extra (softcap will be anywhere from 45% to 75% plus another +13.75% versus AVs).

If you mean Power transfer: Chance to Heal Self, that's usually best put in an auto/toggle (there's one in each of Stamina and Physical Perfection in the above build I posted). It's 3 PPM, so if you stick one in something with a recharge as long as Seishinteki Kyoyo then you usually won't see the full benefit from it - the chance will often be waaaay overcapped. Although since it's not unique, there's certainly nothing to stop you sticking an extra one in if you have the slots free.

Maybe something like the below? I've swapped a few slots around, added the passive accolades and maximised the Enhancement %s without changing the powers (although you could probably get away with trading Focused Accuracy for Conserve Power if you really need more - you have +perception already so FA's main purpose will be whenever you're fighting against something that does crazy amounts of autohit -ToHit Debuffs and you don't want to pop a Yellow Insp!) Looks like the recovery is now working out at +3.72 End/Sec and -0.77 End/Sec from the toggles (except for SoS and FA and Weave, since all are situational) which brings your surplus to +2.95 End/Sec. With SoS running too the surplus drops a bit to +2.63 End/Sec; which should still be a lot more manageable than before. Note that you'll only need to use Weave versus Incarnate Content. The damage output will be a smidge higher due to the rebalanced Enhancement %s plus the extra Proc in Dragon's Tail; and the S/L resistances are now just shy of 66%... which means that due to the reactive Defences Unique, they'll eventually hit the 75% hardcap if you start taking too much damage (and you can reach the cap much quicker if you run perma-Barrier). Note that the Lore pets will also actually help with +recovery a bit - Empowering Burst will be up about 50% of the time during the BP Radial's summon period.

Good Stuff! Certainly sounds like a bit of a eureka/lightbulb moment 🙂 That's actually a very good example of why everyone started using "Damage Per Activation" as the measuring stick. Bitter Freeze Ray takes more than twice as long to animate as Freeze Ray... (2.64 seconds compared to 1.188 seconds) but it only does 38% more damage. So if you're trying to deal the most damage in the shortest amount of time (like chaining your attacks together in the most optimal way) then using Bitter Freeze Ray is usually worse. As you've probably discovered by now, in the Corruptor version of the Ice Blast powerset, the single-target powers with the highest DPA are Bitter Ice Blast (72.04) and Freeze Ray (70.21). Bitter Freeze Ray is a long way behind (43.60), just a tiny smidge ahead of Ice Blast (37.01) and Ice Bolt (35.11). If you go by the power text descriptions, you'll see: Extreme, Extreme, Extreme, Superior and High. However realistically it's closer to: Extreme, Extreme, Medium, Medium and Medium. So those descriptions are indeed rather misleading. An in-depth examination of things is probably beyond the scope of this thread, but:

How about regular team content. Like Missions? Or a Taskforce? On 4x8? With player debuffs/enemy buffs? And the new difficulty additions? My point in the last post was not that Fire Blast is bad. It was that Fire Blast is only THAT far ahead of the rest of the pack whenever you're (i) soloing and (ii) restricted to only using SO enhancements. Fire will always be a good powerset. But the bulk of its damage is tied up in Blaze and Inferno; and its secondary effect is a DoT. That means it tends to corpse-blast a lot on teams; and it has no procable secondary effects (unlike -Defence or -ToHit or -Slow Movement); and it needs a lot of +Recharge slotting to achieve an optimal attack chain. A high-end IO build will therefore often add less additional performance to Fire Blast than it does to other powersets. Fire Blast starts off Tier 1 (with SOs and minimal investment) and remains at Tier 1 (after heavy investment - an expensive IO build and full T4 Incarnates). The other blast sets start off Tier 2 or 3 or 4... some of them stay there, but a few end up at Tier 1 or Tier S depending on the team size + content. Sonic was always rather mediocre as a soloing powerset - it's not "irredeemable", but often the best use it has is to soften up a foe for your secondary's "blapp" attacks. It's considerably better on team content due to the -resistance effect; but like Fire Blast it also suffers from a lack of additional procing opportunities; so it'll never be a Tier 1 set. Other sets can be though - an IOed Fire/ Blaster is good at team content, but Ice/ and Water/ and the newly-revamped Electrical/ can often contend on the same level, if not a smidge higher.

Thought I'd give some direct feedback here rather than just in the Mastermind forum: The proposed fix here feels like a bit of a cludge. It brings the Protector Bots into line with the others, but it also buffs their MM's own defence and lowers the overall defence of the Assault Bot and Battle Drones. It's simultaneously adjusting too many numbers for my liking. Bots/ is a top tier powerset already - surely it doesn't need to buff the master's defence any higher than it already does? If the the goal here is to reduce Bots/ setup time and bring the defence of the Protector Bots into line with the others; then perhaps a better tweak would be to make the Protector Bot bubbles function similar to how the Ember Demon's resistance shields work? e.g. use two effects for the Protector Bot bubbles, one that only targets Robotic Henchmen (AoE 7.5% base defence that stacks twice; call it 'Force Shield') and the other that only targets the player (Single-Target 7.5% base defence that doesn't stack, call it 'Force Shield Owner') --> Job done! 🙂 To my mind the most unfortunate side effect of the proposed change will be that unless you've got a secondary that has some extra form of defence buff, now none of your henchmen will be capable of permanently hitting the softcap. Example: my Bot/Kin has Maneuvers and an Agility Alpha and both +PetDefence uniques and two +5 level 50 Defence IOs in Protector Bots. The Assault Bot and Battle Drones sit at 40.02% Defence. So with Barrier, they get bumped over the 45% softcap mark permanently. Without Barrier Running: With Barrier Running (about to expire, at 119 seconds): These upcoming changes mean that those henchmen on my Bot/Kin would end up sitting just a few percent shy of the softcap (they'll lose 3.42% defence, so the final total will be 42.6%), which is a little bit annoying for soloing things. Whilst the Protector Bots will become level with the others (currently they only hit 33.22% defence with Barrier running) they don't tend to pull as much aggro as the Assault Bot or Battle Drones in the first place. It will however also mean that the Henchmen take much less time to buff themselves up at the start of a mission; and my MM themselves will also gain a bit of extra +Defence% that they don't currently need, so I may be able to drop some set bonus slots and work some extra Damage Procs in. Overall I suspect that my DPS will rise a bit, but my survivability will drop slightly (at least when soloing).

Realistically it means that pet defences will be equal. Protector bots were lagging behind. But the flip side is that unless you've got a secondary that has some extra form of defence buff, now none of your henchmen will be capable of permanently hitting the softcap. Example: my Bot/Kin has Maneuvers and an Agility Alpha and both +PetDefence uniques and two +5 level 50 Defence IOs in Protector Bots. The Assault Bot and Battle Drones sit at 40.02% Defence. So with Barrier, they get bumped over the 45% softcap mark permanently. Without Barrier Running: With Barrier Running (about to expire, at 119 seconds): These upcoming changes mean that those henchmen on my Bot/Kin will now end up sitting just a few percent shy of the softcap (they'll lose 3.42% defence, so the final total will be 42.6%), which is a little bit annoying for soloing things. However the Protector Bots will become level with the others (currently they only hit 33.22% defence with Barrier running) and it'll be much quicker to buff up at the start of a mission. My MM themselves will also gain a bit of extra Defence that they don't currently need, so I may be able to drop some set bonus slots and work some extra Damage Procs in. Overall I suspect that my DPS will rise a bit, but my survivability will drop slightly (at least when not teaming. Multibox duoing etc will be just as safe as ever). Unfortunately Protector Bots don't pull anywhere near as much aggro as the Drones and Assault Bot, so the survivability buff probably won't actually make much difference to them on this particular MM. Whenever I lose a henchman during a +4x8 farming run, it tends to be a Battle Drone. Edit: Honestly I'm really not sure why they've decided to go this route. Bots/ is a top tier powerset already - surely it doesn't need to buff the master's defence any higher than it already does? If the the goal here is to reduce Bots/ setup time and bring the defence of the Protector Bots into line with the others; then perhaps a better tweak would be to make the Protector Bot bubbles function similar to how the Ember Demon's resistance shields work? e.g. use two effects for the Protector Bot bubbles, one that only targets Robotic Henchmen (AoE 7.5% base defence that stacks twice; call it 'Force Shield') and the other that only targets the player (Single-Target 7.5% base defence that doesn't stack, call it 'Force Shield Owner') --> Job done! 🙂

Chilling Ray is the sleep and it does indeed take 'Slow Movement' sets. The Impeded Swiftness Proc and the Gladiator's Javelin Proc are eagerly awaiting some company... 🤩 (I've also got a few caltrop-carpet-bombing toons that are looking forward to it too)

From what I can see, it's solo clear times on an average mission map with SO enhancements only (no IOs, no procs, no incarnates, etc). That's why Fire Blast is so far ahead of the rest of the pack - that setup hasn't been particularly applicable to real-world CoH builds ever since issue 9.

Basically, it has always been this way. As I mentioned in your Blaster thread @Diantane, those terms such as "superior", "minor", "extreme" etc. actually mean very little. If you take the time to ask around or dig through the old forums or look through enough historical patch notes etc... you'll find that many, many years ago there was a whole stink in the CoH playerbase about lack of transparency. At that time, players couldn't tell what their powers actually did and had to datamine or guess at everything... (For Example: "Combat Jumping" increases a character's defence. If you go by the in-game text, then you might think it raises it by a worthwhile amount. But in reality it's extremely tiny). Eventually (in Feb 2008) the devs agreed. And they ended up giving us goodies like the "Real Numbers Display" (AKA the Combat Attributes Window) so that players could finally tell what effects powers grant and compare everything properly. It is generally considered extremely unwise to go by the text descriptions of powers. They're something of a "noob trap". (Veteran CoH players will know that many of those descriptions are downright erroneous and contain misleading/outdated information. Group Fly was a prime culprit of this for decades. Dark Nova Emanation is STILL waiting for a fix...) Instead, take a look at the actual effects of the power. You can do this in multiple ways: (i) Out of the game. Visit this website and click on the different archetypes to see a detailed breakdown of exactly what each power does. Or just download Mids Reborn and flick between the different view modes (Damage Per Activation is the one that's actually useful). (ii) Inside the game. Whenever you're viewing a power, such as on the character creation or level-up 'power selection' window or the enhancement screen... click on one of the "Show Detailed Info here" buttons (sometimes labelled with a green "i" symbol). Just make sure to set the slider to level 50 for an equal comparison across ATs. "Damage per Activation Time" is the main thing to consider for comparing two different powers, since that shows you what their actual damage output will be in an attack chain. (It's also possible to calculate manually: Divide the "Average Damage" by the attack's activation/animation time rounded up to the nearest 0.132 seconds)

In fairness, Diantane has posted a LOT of new threads over the past several months complaining about X or Y or Z. And in each case whenever the forum regulars have tried to help and make genuinely helpful suggestions or explain how things work... silence. The thread goes cold and the advice is apparently ignored and never heeded. Often a new thread pops up a few days later in a different subforum with a similar-sounding complaint. One could assume some kind of attention span deficit thing, or a lack of understanding of how to check thread replies; but after a certain point the sheer volume of those nonsensical threads has resulted in the OP wearing a lot of people's patience extremely thin; and ending up on a lot of ignore lists. A few people have (somewhat understandably) apparently begun automatically downvoting them. As if that actually means anything. Personally I'd still usually give them the benefit of the doubt. And indeed I've commented "helpfully" on many of the OP's threads without drawing attention to their behaviour. But it's rather difficult to explain the function of things to someone who has a completely different expectation of what they should be and who won't remain around to read your answer. For the record, and to remain on topic: As far as I'm aware, in CoH an "Epic Power Pool" doesn't mean a pool that contains epic overpowered abilities that turn you into a UltraSuperDuper character. It means that your character level needs to be in the uppermost tiers - the epic tiers (originally it was levels 41+) whenever you are granted access to that power pool. Epic Power Pools were the original blueside option for this, and they contain powers that round out a character: so Ranged Archetypes will gain access to melee attacks and armor toggles. Melee Archetypes will get ranged attacks and control powers, etc. Patron Power Pools are similar - these were originally redside-only and they follow the particular theme of the Arachnos patron that is associated with each pool. They typically have a similar array of rounding-out abilities based on your Archetype (and often also a temporary pet). That's not to say that truly "Epic" powers don't exist in CoH; but they're different from Epic Power Pools. I believe what the OP is actually looking for here is Incarnate Abilities - however they'd first need to get to level 50 and then spend some time unlocking them.